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Full speed to the open country 


RED TOP RANCH 


A STORY OF RANCH LIFE 
IN WYOMING 


BY 

MINNA CAROLINE SMITH 

'1 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Twi Copies Received 

SEP 4 »907 



/8io2.^ 


COPY A. 


Copyright, 1907 

BY 

E. P. Dutton &: Co. 
Published, September, 1907 


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To Marion Schroeder 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I. 

Leaving Home - - - . 



PAGE 

1 

11. 

At the Ranch - - - . 

- 

- 

17 

III. 

The Red Signal of Disteess - 

- 

- 

31 

IV. 

The Stampede - - - - 

- 

- 

42 

V. 

Helping Aunt Kate 

- 

- 

53 

VI. 

The Little Buckskin Broncho 

- 

- 

65 

VII. 

Mary’s Strange Secret - 

- 

- 

81 

VIII. 

The New Hired Man 

- 

- 

94 

IX. 

Elizabeth Comes . _ - 

- 

- 

106 

X. 

Aunt Kate’s Berry Party 

- 

- 

125 

XI. 

Over the Continental Divide 

- 

- 

135 

XII. 

When the Indians Came 

- 


155 

XIII. 

Frontier Day - - - - 

- 

- 

168 

XIV. 

In an Indian Camp 

- 

- 

190 

XV. 

Home Again - - - - 


. 

209 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGB 

Full Speed to the Open Countey. Frontispiece 16 
Fire Ball Dropped to his Knees and Mary 

Got on his Back 24*^ 

At THE Log House - 108 

Through the Burning Forest - - - - 154 

Bud Placed the Indian Baby in Mary’s Arms - 186 

“Oh! Auntie is it True?” ----- 212 




i 


RED TOP RANCH 


CHAPTER I 

LEAVING HOME 

Mary Lloyd lived with her mother, father, and 
sister Edith in a pleasant house fronting the 
water of Long Island Sound. Mary was a girl 
of eleven, a romping, healthy, out-door girl, good 
at her lessons, but always glad when they were 
over. She was usually a little sunburned; her 
fluffy light hair was often out of order; her hair- 
ribbons would get lost, but her blue eyes and 
pretty mouth did not lose their smiling look for 
such small troubles as that. 

She came rushing like a whirlwind up on the 
piazza where her mother and sister Edith were 
sitting one June afternoon. School closed the 
morning before and Mary was revelling in free- 
dom. The postman had just come up the drive- 
way; she had run down the steps to get the 
letters, and now was fairly dancing with joy. 


2 


UED TOE RANCH 


“Mother! mother!” she cried, waving an en- 
velope over her head. “ Here is a letter from 
Wyoming, from Uncle Billy! ” 

“ Let me have it.” Mrs. Lloyd held out her 
hand. 

“ No, no! It ’s addressed to me.” 

Mary and her uncle were very special friends, 
and had been since his visit East the year before. 

“ Very well, read it yourself,” said her mother. 

Mary tore open the envelope, and glancing 
down the page she cried: 

“ Oh, oh. Uncle Billy wants me to come out to 
the ranch and he will meet me in Chicago! ” She 
began dancing up and down again. 

“ A big trip for a little girl,” said her father, 
coming unseen up the walk behind her. 

Mary turned at the sound of his voice, ran to 
him and clasped his arm. 

“Say I may go, daddy!” she coaxed him, 
“ Please say I may go to Wyoming! ” 

“There, don’t pull daddy’s arm off!” he an- 
swered smiling. “ Sit down here on the steps 
and read us your letter.” 

Mary eagerly read aloud: 

“ Red Top Ranch, Wyoming, 

“ June 14, 1906. 

“ My dear niece Mary: 

“ I want you to come out here to the ranch and 


LEAVING HOME 


3 


stay with us till fall at least. Your aunt is alone 
too much since we lost our baby last spring. She 
needs you. Don’t speak of this to her, but come 
and make a business of cheering her up. She 
says to tell you that you shall ride on her 
thoroughbred mare Fireball. Y our cousins 
Fred and Bert and Charlie will all be glad to see 
you. Charlie says to tell that little pink tender- 
foot she shall have her pick of our bronchoes, and 
ride horseback every day. 

“Tell your mother and father that I am going 
to Chicago next week on business, and I shall be 
there by the time you get this letter, say June 
eighteenth. If you leave New York on the 
morning of June twentieth, I will meet you in 
your station at Chicago on the twenty-first. 
Then, darling, you and I will go to Wyoming 
together. Tell your father I hope he will tele- 
graph me at the Palmer House, Chicago, when 
you get this letter. Then I will telegraph you 
so that just before your train arrives in Chicago 
you will get it, telling you that I am at the sta- 
tion all right waiting for you. 

“ Love to all. 

“ Your Uncle Billy, 

“ William J. Merwin.” 

“Father, may I go? May I go?” Mary’s 
arms went around her father’s neck. 


4 * 


RED TOP RANCH 


“Don’t hug daddy’s head off,” her mother 
cried as, laughing, he loosened her arms. 

“ How could you go to Chicago all alone? ” he 
asked. 

“ Of course she could n’t go! ” said her mother. 
“ I would n’t think of such a thing.” 

“Why not?” said Mr. Lloyd. “I know 
some of those conductors on that fast train to 
Chicago. Mary would be all right. There are 
no changes to make.” 

“ I don’t see why Mary has to go everywhere. 
Nobody asks me to go to any ranches,” said 
Edith. 

“ Quietly, now! ” said her father. “ Mary is 
the one who is invited. When you are older, per- 
haps you can go too.” 

“Mary hasn’t proper clothes to wear on a 
ranch. She can’t go off at a day’s notice like 
that,” objected Mrs. Lloyd. 

“ She won’t need fancy clothes out on the 
ranch,” said Mr. Lloyd. “ Come in here a min- 
ute, mother, I want to talk to you.” 

Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd went into the house. 

Mary stood fairly cooing with hope and de- 
light, while Edith, teasing, said: 

“ You would break your neck if you got on a 
broncho! ” 

“ I am not afraid of a broncho ! I rode horse- 
back with Uncle Billy when he was here.” 


LEAVING HOME 


5 


“Well, the Indians will catch you.” 

“ All the Indians are good Indians nowadays. 
Uncle Billy says so.” 

When her father and mother came out on the 
piazza again, Mary read on their faces that they 
had decided she was to visit the family in Wyo- 
ming, and she flew into her mother’s arms and 
hugged her for consenting. 

Two mornings later Mary went into the 
Grand Central Station with her father and 
mother and Edith. 

She was dressed in a brown linen dress with 
red tie, belt, and hair-ribbons, and a sailor-hat. 
She felt strange at the thought of starting to 
travel a thousand miles all alone. But she kept 
on smiling whenever her father looked at her, 
while they went hand in hand through the throng 
of people to buy her ticket, and crossed the great 
waiting-room to the baggage-room to check her 
trunk. When Mary came back again to her 
mother and Edith, she sat down between them 
and slipped her hand into her mother’s, and sat 
very silent till the train for Chicago was called 
by the man with the megaphone. Then she 
bravely kissed her mother and Edith good-bye, 
held up her chin and walked along to the train 
with her father, as if going off by herself was an 
every-day affair. When they got through the 
gates and into the train, they found ten or twelve 


6 


RED TOP RANCH 


people in the sleeping-car, but there was no other 
little girl. On reaching Mary’s section in the 
Pullman, Mr. Lloyd spoke to the conductor and 
gave him her long ticket. 

“ Be sure to put this young lady off at the 
right station,” he said. “ Don’t let her get 
carried past Chicago.” 

“ I ’ll take good care of her,” said the big man 
in the blue coat, and smiled at Mary. 

When her father bent to kiss her good-bye she 
had to wink very fast to see him through the mist 
in her eyes, but she kissed and hugged him 
heartily, trying to smile as he hurried out of the 
car. When the train moved off, Mary pressed 
her face against the window pane and saw him 
standing on the platform lifting his hat. She 
kissed her hand to him, but as she lost sight of 
him and the train roared out into the darkness of 
the tunnel, the tears would come. She turned 
and hid her face in her arm against the back of 
the seat. They were out in the light again when 
she heard the conductor saying: 

“ Well, Miss Lloyd, are you going into the 
dining-car? ” His voice was kind and Mary 
looked up, pleased to be called Miss Lloyd. 

“ No, thank you,” she replied. “ I have a box 
of luncheon, but my father said to ask you to be 
so kind as to take me into the dining-car to-night 
for my supper.” 


LEAVING HOME 


7 


“ All right, I ’ll come and get you,” said the 
conductor. “ There ’s another girl about your 
size in the next car. It ’s perfectly safe to go 
through the vestibule if you feel like going in 
there this afternoon.” He walked on down the 
aisle. 

Mary opened the candy box that her mother 
had filled with sandwiches and oranges. Tied on 
top of the box was a parcel addressed in Edith’s 
handwriting. Mary opened it and read these 
words on a slip of paper : “ Don’t let the Indians 
catch you. With much love, from Edith.” 
Folded within was the joy and pride of Edith’s 
heart, her best lace-trimmed handkerchief. 

“ Edith ’s all right! ” thought Mary as she put 
the dainty handkerchief back into its wrapper. 
I ’ll keep this for best.” 

She leaned against the blue plush seat when 
she had finished her luncheon, wondering about 
the girl in the next car; but she felt too timid to 
leave her place and in a little while she fell asleep. 
An hour or so later, she opened her eyes. Her 
head was on a narrow pillow. Across the aisle, 
looking at her with interest sat a girl of about her 
own age in a pink linen dress. 

Mary sat up. The girl came across and sat 
down in the seat beside her. 

“ I told the porter to get you the pillow,” she 
said. 


8 


RED TOP RANCH 


‘‘ Thank you,” said Mary. 

“ I ’m used to travelling,” said her new 
acquaintance. 

“ Are you all alone, too? ” asked Mary. 

“ No, my father came with me. He ’s in the 
other car. He has gone to smoke, so I came 
through to see if there was anybody to talk to.” 

“ Are you going to Chicago? ” asked Mary. 

“ Yes, we live there. My name ’s Elizabeth 
Wright. I have been to New York with my 
father on business. This is the fourth time.” 

Mary told her her name and where she was 
going, and of the telegram expected next day. 

The children soon felt acquainted and Eliza- 
beth proposed that they go into her Pullman as 
there were fewer people there, and they could 
play. They found her father reading his news- 
paper. He was now the only person in the car. 
Elizabeth introduced Mary to him; then the two 
little girls had a game of tag up and down the 
aisle. They romped until they were tired and 
out of breadth; they were glad to sit down and 
rest until it was time for dinner. Mary felt 
strange but very grand sitting at one of the 
tables in the dining-car full of people. Her place 
was next the wide window opposite Elizabeth 
and her father, a gray-haired handsome man, 
whom the colored waiters called “ Senator.” 

After dinner Mr. Wright spoke to the conduc- 


LEAVING HOME 


9 


tor, and asked him to change Mary’s berth from 
the other car to their own. Bed-time came soon, 
and the colored porter made up Mary’s bed in the 
same section with Elizabeth’s. 

“ I had better get up on the top shelf,” whis- 
pered Mary, when she saw the porter let down 
the upper berth, which unfolded from the wall of 
the car like the shelf of her mother’s writing-desk. 

“No, I ’ll get up there,” answered Elizabeth. 
“ I am used to travelling.” 

“ It is like getting up on a horse — almost, and 
I like a horse,” said Mary. She watched with in- 
terest as the porter shook out the heavy curtains 
and hung them up before the berths. 

Elizabeth laughed and hopped up to the top 
berth before Mary knew what she was going to 
do. So Mary got in below and began to un- 
dress. In a few moments she stood up on the 
side of the berth, behind the curtain. 

“ Elizabeth,” she whispered. “ Where shall 
I put my clothes? ” 

“ Oh, fold them up and put them in that rack 
at the foot of your bed. Put your hair-ribbons 
in the little hammock,” Elizabeth whispered back. 
“ Give me your skirt and jacket and I ’ll hang 
them up here on the high hook next to mine.” 

“ Take my hat up too,” responded Mary, hand- 
ing up the things. She began to laugh when she 
saw their coats and skirts hanging high with the 


10 


RED TOP RANCH 


hats above them. “ They look like Blue Beard’s 
beheaded wives,” she whispered. 

Elizabeth laughed so much at this speech that 
her father called from his section farther down 
the car: “Children! Children!” 

So the two girls whispered good-night to each 
other, Mary dropped back into her place in the 
semi-darkness, and folded up her clothes in si- 
lence; she put on her nightgown, and when she 
had said her prayers crept in between the sheets 
and soon fell sound asleep. Nor did she awaken 
once until she heard the loud voice of the porter 
calling as he walked down the aisle: 

“ Breakfast is now ready in the dining-car! ” 

Mary climbed up on the edge of her berth and 
peeped into the top one, but Elizabeth was gone. 
Mary sat down on her blankets, fished her hair- 
ribbons out of the little hammock, and was won- 
dering how she was going to dress in such a 
narrow place, when Elizabeth came back from the 
dressing-room and parted the curtains. She was 
washed and dressed, and had her hair-ribbons on. 
She carried a dark blue bath gown over her arm. 

“ Oh, mine is in my trunk! ” exclaimed Mary, 
the minute she saw it. “ I don’t believe mamma 
realized they have a bath-tub on the sleeping- 
car!” 

Elizabeth laughed. “ There is n’t any bath- 
tub. but you can wash at the wash-bowl and dress 


LEAVING HOME 


11 


much better if take your clothes into the 
dressing-room. I ’ll lend you mine.” She held 
out the sleeves, and JMary slipped into her gown. 
Elizabeth led the way to the little room where 
Mary soon got ready for breakfast and came out 
with a bright face and a good appetite. 

After their breakfast in the dining-car every- 
body began getting ready to arrive in Chicago. 
Mary looked anxiously at the conductor and the 
porter whenever they passed through the car. 
At last the porter brought a telegram to Eliza- 
beth’s father. 

“ Is that for me? ” she asked. 

‘‘ No, my dear,” said the Senator. “ Are you 
expecting a telegram? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” said Mary. 

Elizabeth told her father of the plan of Mary’s 
uncle, and he went and made inquiries. 

But the train pulled into the great Chicago 
station, and there was no word from Uncle Billy. 

Mary trembled with excitement as she stepped 
out of the car with her hand-bag in her hand. She 
looked eagerly at every man they met as she went 
with Elizabeth and the Senator into the big wait- 
ing room. But she saw not one familiar face. 

“ Just sit here, until I get a carriage,” said 
Elizabeth’s father to her. 

“ We ’ll have to take you home with us,” said 
Elizabeth as he walked away. 


12 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary rose, and went across to the telephone 
booths. 

“ Please call up the Palmer House and my 
uncle, Mr. Merwin, and tell him I Ve come,’’ she 
said to the girl at the desk. 

The girl at the desk pushed up her pompadour 
and smiled patronizingly. 

“ What ’s your name, little girl? ” she asked. 

“ Miss Lloyd,” said Mary, with dignity. 

The girl telephoned, and the answer came back 
that Mr. Merwin had left the hotel. 

“ What shall I do? ” said Mary to herself. “ I 
can’t go home with Elizabeth! I had better go 
down to the Palmer House and wait until he 
comes.” 

“ Nonsense,” said Elizabeth’s father, when he 
heard this plan. “ Of course you must come home 
with us, and I ’ll telephone till I find your uncle.” 

Mary was having hard work to keep from cry- 
ing as she went with Elizabeth to the carriage. 
She felt almost as if she was being kidnapped. 
The Senator put her and Elizabeth into the car- 
riage; he was just getting in himself when Mary 
gave a shrill scream of delight and fairly tumbled 
out to the sidewalk. For there, coming straight 
towards her, was a tall, broad man, — Uncle Billy! 
In a moment she was swung up in his arms, 
hugged, and kissed; then stood smiling on the 
sidewalk by him. 


LEAVING HOME 


13 


“Why didn’t you send me the telegram?” 
asked Mary. 

“ I did, chick. I sent it all right. Here it is.” 
Her uncle gave it to Mary. “ That porter in 
the next Pullman had it. I ’ve been through the 
cars, looking for you. The porter thought the 
telegram was for some grown-up young lady 
named Lloyd. He thought you were the Sena- 
tor’s other daughter.” Mr. Merwin turned and 
spoke to Elizabeth’s father. Then they all shook 
hands and said good-bye, and Mary went away 
with her uncle. 

They spent the rest of the day in Chicago, and 
took the night train for Wyoming. All night 
and all day and all the next night they rode west- 
ward in the sleeping-car. 

Mary will never forget that second day when, 
as they sat at breakfast in the dining-car, she 
first saw the high mountains with their snowy 
peaks lifted against the June sky. 

On the other side of the train, which had 
climbed up the long grade from the prairie 
farms, the unfenced plains swept away to the 
horizon with scarcely a house in sight. 

“ It seems like a dream that I ’m in Wyo- 
ming,” said Mary. “ I have just longed to be 
here ever since you were at our house.” 

“ You are a mile up in the air too,” said her 
uncle. “ That ’s your altitude now.” 


RED TOP RANCH 


U 


“ I don’t know what altitude means, Uncle 
Billy,” said Mary. 

“ You ’ll hear a lot about altitude out here,” 
he replied. “ It means the distance above the 
sea. This train is nearly a mile above the sea 
now and when you get to the ranch you ’ll be over 
a mile higher up in the air than you were at Long 
Island Sound.” 

“ Goodness ! I feel like a balloon ! ” said Mary. 

As the train drew near the station at Laramie, 
they saw from the car window a lady and three 
boys on horseback, galloping full gait towards 
the station. One of the boys was leading a pony 
by a long rope. 

“ Here come your Aunt Kate and the boys,” 
said Uncle Billy. “ They had to get up early 
this morning to ride in twenty miles to meet us.” 

When the train slowed up at the station, the 
four riders crossed the track in front of the en- 
gine, the ponies jumping and dancing, and 
pulled up back of the waiting-room. The mother 
of the boys was slender and small. 

As soon as Mary and her uncle appeared, this 
little lady slipped from her saddle to the ground, 
tossed her broncho’s bridle to her eldest son, Fred, 
and hurried to welcome the travellers. 

Bert and Charlie, the younger boys, who were 
still on their bronchoes, waved their hats at their 
father and he waved his hand to them. 


LEAVING HOME 


15 


“ Get down there, you young rascals,” he 
called, “ and come and meet your cousin.” 

With one arm Mary clung close to her Aunt 
Kate while she shook hands with each of the boys 
whom she had never seen before. 

“ Here ’s a bronk for you to ride home, Mary,” 
said Charlie, who was about her own age. His 
round sunburned face wore a mischievous grin. 
“ I led him to town for you.” 

“ Thank you.” Mary looked approvingly at 
the broncho which had on one of the boys’ sad- 
dles. He was a bay cow-pony, with a short nose 
and long tail. “ Is n’t he lovely,” she said, going 
towards the little horse. 

“Xonsense, Mary!” said her uncle. ‘'You 
are coming in the buggy with me.” He had left 
his horse and buggy in town when he went to 
Chicago. “ Your trunk will come along out to 
the ranch on the stage this afternoon.” 

Mary was patting the pony’s neck. 

“ Uncle Billy, I ’d love to ride this horse just 
a minute! ” she said. “ What ’s his name? ” 

“ Tom! ” said her uncle. “ Well, get on him 
for a minute, then. Up you go! ” 

He lifted Mary into the saddle, and she took 
the bridle. 

“ Lead Tom up and down slowly, Charlie. 
Give Mary a little ride while we ’re getting her 
trunk,” said Uncle Billy. 


16 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ All right,” answered the boy. 

Charlie led the pony down the road past the 
engine, walking very slowly, then he crossed the 
track and began going faster and faster. The 
boy began to run, the horse began to trot. As 
he broke into a canter, Charlie tossed the halter 
to Mary. She caught it, grasped the saddle, and 
held fast while the broncho galloped off towards 
home. 

“Whoa! Whoa!” she cried, but still the 
broncho dashed along. She clutched the leather 
with both hands hearing the whirring of the wind 
in her ears, while the broncho ran out to the open 
country. All the world seemed to be made up 
of horse and girl! 


CHAPTER II 


AT THE RANCH 

“Hi there, Tom! Hi! Hang on, Mary, hang 
tight! I ’m coming for you. Don’t be afraid! ” 
Mary heard as if in a dream a voice shouting, 
“ Hang on, Mary! ” 

Uncle Billy rode up beside her on Charlie’s 
pony, grasped her bridle rein, and galloping be- 
side her, gradually brought the broncho Tom to 
a standstill. 

“ Good for you, darling! I thought I never 
should catch up with you.” 

“ I was n’t afraid,” said Mary. 

“Of course not! You hung on like a good 
one. We ’ll have to put you up as a champion 
rider at the races. Frontier Day!” 

“I wasn’t afraid!” repeated Mary, sitting 
erect. Her cheeks were red, her heart was beat- 
ing fast; she had never felt so happy in her life. 
She leaned forward and patted Tom on the neck. 

“ Of course you were not ! But Charlie had 
better be afraid, starting you off for a runaway! 
Just wait until his mother catches him.” He 


17 


18 


RED TOP RANCH 


turned the pony around, and holding fast to the 
halter walked him back to the station. Mary 
sat up holding the bridle, feeling like a horse- 
woman. Fred and Bert came riding to meet 
them, but Charlie kept out of sight. When they 
were ready to start for home he started too, but 
rode far behind, leading the extra pony. 

Mary went in the buggy with her uncle, while 
the others galloped on ahead. On either hand 
the open country stretched off towards the moun- 
tain range. The plain was covered with yellow- 
ish grass; once in a while a settler’s cabin came 
in sight. 

Far at the right a wide green belt of cotton- 
wood trees marked the course of the river. Be- 
yond were hills of strange colored earth; above 
these, white mountain peaks. It rained before 
they got home, then the white peaks shone out, a 
broad band of rainbows. Below, clouds and 
sunshine played, throwing wonderful lights 
and shadows over the face of the mountain 
range. 

“Oh — h!” said Mary after a long silence, 
snuggling close to Uncle Billy’s side. “ I am so 
glad I came! ” 

Red Top Ranch extended for several miles 
along the river at the foot of Mount Merwin. 
Its name came from the field of mountain grass 
called red top that grew on the river meadow. 


AT THE RANCH 


19 


Mr. Merwin’s house stood about half a mile 
from the main road, close by the swiftly-flowing 
Laramie. It was a roomy place, two stories in 
height, made of huge pine logs with the bark 
hewed off. Near it at the left was a bunk-house 
for the hired men. There was a large log barn, 
a carriage-house, and a corral. 

As Dick and the buggy drew near, a shepherd 
dog, two hounds, and a queer long-nosed yellow 
dog bounded out, all barking welcome to their 
master. 

“ Oh, look at the dogs ! ” Mary exclaimed with 
delight. Mrs. Merwin, who had got home first, 
hurried out into the porch. The sound of a 
lamb bleating came round the corner of the house 
and Charlie appeared carrying a fat one in his 
arms, but when he saw his mother he dodged out 
of sight again. 

“ What is Charlie going to do with that lamb. 
Uncle Billy?” asked Mary with intense interest 
as she climbed over the wheel. 

“ He is going to put it where it can’t get into 
the alfalfa,” he replied. “Alfalfa is that stuff 
over yonder, Mary, something like clover.” He 
pointed with his buggy whip to a field of lucerne 
beyond the barn. 

“ Come in to the house, Mary,” said her aunt. 
“ You ’ll have plenty of time to get rested before 
dinner.” 


20 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Oh, Aunt Kate, I don’t want to get rested! 
I want to see everything,” said Mary. 

“ Fireball is the most important thing on this 
ranch, but I ’m afraid she ’s running out in the 
bunch.” 

“In the bunch!” echoed Mary delightedly. 
“ Oh, now I know I ’ve got here ! ” and she 
danced up and down. 

“ Come along then,” said Aunt Kate. She 
took her hat down from an antler of the antelope 
hat-rack and went out with Mary. 

They went past a large fowl-yard where sev- 
eral hens were leading broods of chickens about, 
and crossed a small irrigating ditch, made to 
bring the water from the river for the fields, then 
on over a rise of ground. At a distance a herd 
of horses was feeding. Mrs. Merwin shaded her 
eyes with her hand and looked. 

“ I declare, I can’t see the mare,” she said. 
She put her fingers to her mouth and gave a loud 
shrill whistle. “ Fireball is n’t there. If she 
were, she would look up at my call.” 

“ How long have you had her? ” asked Mary. 

“We raised her from a colt. Her mother is 
Venus, a famous racing mare. I rode her at 
Cheyenne last Frontier Day. She is that bay 
at the left of the bunch.” 

“ Is she a broncho? ” 

“Dear me, no! She’s a thoroughbred. 


AT THE RANCH 


21 


Come, let ’s go back and start one of the men out 
to look for Fireball. She must have jumped the 
fence again.” 

They went to the house and at the pump beside 
the kitchen door they found three hired men 
washing their hands and faces for dinner. Mrs. 
Merwin spoke to the tallest, darkest, of the three. 

“ Bud, Fireball ’s got away again. Will you 
look her up as soon as you have your dinner? ” 

“ Yes, Mis’ Merwin.” He straightened him- 
self. “ I reckon this is the young lady from the 
East?” 

“ Yes. Mary, this is Bud Todd, your uncle’s 
right-hand man.” 

Mary and Bud smiled at each other and were 
friends from that moment. Mrs. Merwin went 
on into the house just as the queer yellow dog 
came sniffing around Mary. 

“What a peculiar looking dog!” she said, 
patting his head. “ What is his name? ” 

“ Numskull.” 

“ What kind of a dog is he? ” 

“ One half coyote, t’ other half fool,” answered 
Bud. 

“ Oh,” said Mary politely, wondering at his re- 
ply; then she asked, “ Do you think you ’ll have 
to go far to find Fireball after dinner? ” 

“ Well, between you and me, I should n’t won- 
der if she was over there on the island. She 


RED TOR RANCH 


knows there ’s some good grass on the meadow 
back of that clump of cottonwoods.” 

Bud turned to finish washing. Mary slipped 
away down to the bridge. This bridge, that 
crossed the Laramie River, was not made of lum^ 
her but of cottonwood poles fitted closely to- 
gether, with under-pinning very strong and firm, 
to withstand the spring freshets. When the snow 
begins to melt, the river comes roaring bank-full 
down the valley, but in July it was shallow above 
the bridge. Below was a fine deep pool where 
Mr. Merwin often caught trout for breakfast. 
Mary stopped for a moment half way across and 
looked over the railing at the bright shallows. 
“ I ’ll ask Aunt Kate to let me go wading there 
some day,” she thought; then she went on to the 
island. She walked up the bank, and crossed 
a little inlet on a single plank, feeling very 
daring as she saw the water fully two feet deep 
beneath her. She hurried on along the grassy 
bank exploring and came to a thicket of alder 
trees. 

J ust beyond was a beautiful sunny place where 
the river was broad and shallow, and the water 
rippled musically over shining sands. 

On the shore, just hfting her graceful head 
after a drink, was a bay mare with long black 
mane and tail. Her silky coat shone gold in the 
sunshine. There were black points close to her 


AT THE RANCH 


23 


feet on her slender legs. She heard some one 
coming and turned her head to look. Mary 
saw her fine pointed ears and her big friendly 
eyes. 

As Mary came nearer, the mare whinnied as if 
to say How-do-you-do! 

“Oh, what a perfect beauty you are!” cried 
Mary. “Isn’t your name Fireball?” 

“ Yes, my name is Fireball,” answered a deep 
grumbling voice. 

Mary jumped and looked around. Nobody 
was in sight. 

“Fireball!” repeated the deep voice. It 
came from the alder thicket. 

“You must be hungry for your dinner, 
Charlie Merwin!” said Mary. “I know it’s 
you! ” 

“ Father won’t let me have dinner in the house 
because I gave you a nice fast gallop on that 
pony,” said Charlie, coming out of the bushes. 
“I’m going to catch a trout, and roast him on 
some coals by and by.” 

The mare whinnied as if she wanted attention. 

]\Iary pulled a handful of grass and went up 
to her. Fireball pawed the sand and neighed 
again. Mary gave her the grass and patted her 
nose. The mare nozzled against her, and Mary 
threw both arms around her neck and gave her a 
kiss between the eyes. After that they were firm 


RED TOP RANCH 


U 

friends. Mary walked a little distance away 
and whistled as her aunt had done. Fireball 
came trotting up to her. She patted her and 
hugged her again and gave her some more 
grass. 

“ Oh, I wish I could get up on your back this 
minute,” she said. 

“ I ’ll hold her nose if you ’ll try. She ’ll stand 
still for you all right,” said Charlie, who had 
followed. 

Then Fireball did a very pretty thing. She 
dropped to the ground, looking at Mary with 
kind eyes. 

“ Oh, you darling! ” cried Mary. 

“ She wants to give you a ride. That ’s a 
trick mother taught her when she first began to 
ride her,” said Charlie. 

With a beating heart Mary jumped up on the 
mare’s back, and sat astride. 

Fireball slowly and gracefully got to her feet 
again, and stood quite still. Mary chirrupped, 
half timid, half delighted, and Fireball turned 
and walked slowly towards the house, Charlie 
trudging along at her side to the bridge. 

Mary felt her courage grow, and as her aunt 
came round the milk-house and Fireball, stepping 
daintily off the bridge, began to trot, she laughed 
aloud. 

“Well, I declare, Mary Lloyd!” exclaimed 



Fire Ball dropped to his knees, and Mary got on his back 




AT THE RANCH 


25 


Mrs. Merwin. “ Billy, do come and look at this 
child! ” 

Mary was patting Fireball’s neck and smiling 
happily as her uncle came to the doorway. 

“ That horse was trained for you, I guess, 
Mary,” said her uncle. “Down!” 

The mare dropped to her knees again, and 
Mary got off, laughing. The coyote dog came 
bounding to her for a pat on the head, then she 
gave Fireball another hug and ran and slipped 
her hand into her uncle’s. 

“ Can’t Charlie have his dinner in the house, 
please. Uncle Billy? ” she coaxed. “ He ’s starv- 
ing over on the island.” 

“Starving, is he? Well, seeing it’s you, 
we ’ll forgive him, this time. Now run in and 
get a lump of sugar for Fireball.” 

Mary fell asleep that night to the sound of 
coyotes howling up in the hills. When she woke 
next morning, in her cosy bed-room with pink 
rosebuds on the wall-paper, she felt very stiff. 
That runaway ride on the broncho after the long 
journey had been almost too much for her. But 
who would think of lying in bed on such a lovely 
day! She could hear the busy sounds of the 
morning. People’s voices, poultry clucking, 
dogs barking, lambs bleating, horses neighing. 
And with all sounded the songs of birds and the 
rippling of the river. 


26 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary dressed and ran down-stairs. Every- 
body had had breakfast, but her Aunt Kate soon 
gave her some on the dining-room table. 

Bert came in while she was at the table. 

“ Well, Mary,” he said, “ I hope you don’t feel 
too tired this morning to come out and run a 
race on Tom? ” 

“ Let the child alone, Bertie,” said his mother. 

“ I ’ll be out in a minute,” said Mary. 

Not for anything would she say how stiff she 
felt. 

“Don’t talk horse to-day. Give Mary time 
to get rested from her journey before you put 
her on a horse again,” said Mrs. Merwin. “ How 
should you like to go and look about the place 
with Bert, my dear, while I am busy this 
morning? ” 

“ Can’t I help you? ” asked Mary. 

“ No, thank you. Some other time.” 

“ I ’ll show you my bottle colt,” volunteered 
Bert. “ A lady came out here visiting from Lar- 
amie and the mare she drove left us a colt. They 
could n’t spare the mother to stay any longer, so 
they gave me the colt to raise. I have to feed it 
from a bottle.” 

“ How funny! I want to see it! ” 

“ Wait till I get its milk.” When Bert came 
back from the milk-house he had two pop-bottles 
full of new milk, and soon he and Mary went out 


AT THE RANCH 




together to the lot beyond the barn to feed Bert’s 
pet. The colt was a small forlorn looking creat- 
ure, but very fond of the hand that fed him. He 
came trotting up to Bert, who gave Mary one of 
the bottles to hold. Then he held the other up 
high and the colt stretched his neck to get his din- 
ner as when his mother was with him. Bert held 
the pop-bottle so that the flow of milk was slow, 
and the colt placidly drank with a look of con- 
tent, while Mary watched with interest. 

“ Do you ever feed calves this way? ” she 
asked. 

Bert laughed. “ No,” he said. “ When we 
take them from their mothers young, we 
just hold their noses down into a pail of milk. 
They learn how to drink all right in a few 
days, but this fellow did n’t begin young 
enough.” 

When the colt had flnished, Bert and Mary 
rinsed the milk bottles at the pump, left them 
sunning on a shelf, then strolled off down the 
river. Bert took Mary to see a place where once 
he caught a beaver in a trap on its way down 
stream, as his father used to trap many beavers 
when he first came to Wyoming. 

“ The trout are jumping for all they are worth 
this morning,” Bert made comment as they 
slowly passed the second shallows below his 
beaver trap. When they came to the third 


28 


RED TOP RANCH 


shallows and he saw them full of trout, Bert 
got excited. 

“Wait here a minute! I must run and get 
my tackle,^’ he said, and darted away through the 
alder thickets towards the house. 

Bert’s intentions were the best when he left 
his cousin alone. He meant to be back in a few 
minutes. But his brother Charlie had taken his 
favorite rod and gone up river trout fishing. Of 
course Bert felt that he must scurry up the bank, 
find his brother, and recover his property. This 
took time and trouble, for Charlie was having 
good luck with that rod and hated to be dis- 
turbed. Then Bert thought that as he had al- 
ready been gone so long it would not matter if 
he took a little more time and caught a few grass- 
hoppers for bait. 

When at last after wandering over the island 
meadow, he crossed the river and came back to 
the spot where he had left Mary, she was nowhere 
to be seen. Bert took it for granted that she had 
got tired of waiting for him and gone to the 
house; so after trying his luck in the third shal- 
lows for a time in vain, he went back up the river 
where Charlie was successfully whipping the 
stream. 

Mary had not gone to the house. She had 
strolled on till she came to a broad place in the 
river where a fence of cottonwood poles crossed 


AT THE RANCH 


29 


the stream. Beyond was a beautiful meadow. 
It looked as if wild strawberries might grow over 
there, so Mary climbed up on the first length of 
fence and edged her way out over the water. She 
found that she was not a bit afraid. The water 
rushed under, bright and sparkling in the sun- 
shine. The poles were strong and firm, so Mary 
decided to cross the river on the fence. It was 
slow work, but great fun, walking sidewise, foot 
over foot, and clinging to the upper rail, hand 
over hand. She made her way over easily, but 
when she got to the farther end of the fence it 
was hard to get ashore. The fence ended against 
a bank where an old cottonwood tree had been 
blown down ; its trunk and branches made a huge 
mass difficult to get through. But Mary was 
not to be stopped now. She grasped a bough, 
scrambled through a lot of broken branches, tear- 
ing her dress and scratching her hands, and was 
soon out on dry land beyond the tree in the 
beautiful meadow. 

The grass was waving in the breeze, and wild 
flowers blue and yellow seemed beckoning her to 
come and pick them. Mary gathered a handful 
as she went on, searching for strawberries. From 
behind a bush a bevy of prairie chickens flew up- 
wards with a sudden whirr, up and away towards 
the mountain that loomed blue in the yellow 
sunshine. 


30 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary went nearly a quarter of a mile down the 
meadow; then she turned and strolled back again. 

She was near the place where the fence crossed 
the river when she sat down to rest upon a flat 
stone, and imagined that she heard a queer, rat- 
tling sound. She sprang up in a panic, and ran 
towards the river as fast as she could go, climbing 
over the old tree quickly, and out on the fence 
again. She was climbing along towards the home- 
ward side, when all at once she heard — and this 
time it was not imagination — a loud, ratthng 
sound. She hung over the fence rail, and felt 
herself growing cold with fear. 

“ Snakes, snakes ! ” she moaned. She had al- 
ways had a horror even of garter snakes at home, 
so you can guess how she felt when she saw, in 
the grass close by the place where she must get 
off, two enormous rattlesnakes. Her hands 
shook so that she could hardly hold to the fence; 
her arms were all gooseflesh. Her throat grew 
dry; she choked and sobbed. One of the rattle- 
snakes wriggled out in plain sight and came a 
little nearer the river bank. 

“Oh — ^h!” screamed Mary. It was a pierc- 
ing scream, for in her fright she believed that the 
snake was going to crawl out on the fence rail 
and attack her. 


CHAPTER III 


THE RED SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 

The rattlesnake lifted his head. Mary 
screamed again. The snake lifted a little higher, 
as if looking to see what the sound might be. 
Mary was sure now that he was going to jump 
out at her, and she gazed in terror so great that 
her voice did not come at all. She stared at the 
serpent with eyes that seemed to be coming out 
of her head, while her arms clung convulsively to 
the fence rail. It was only a short time, but it 
seemed a long, long while before the rattlesnake 
wriggled away in the grass where his partner had 
already gone. Mary was just beginning to 
breathe freely after her choking pain, when a 
third snake, bigger than either of the others, came 
rattling into sight and settled himself as if for a 
sleep beside the first pole of the fence on shore. 
Mary crept along the fence nearly to the farther 
shore. But she dared not land on that side 
either. The old cottonwood tree, the bank, the 
meadow, all that had been so pleasant, now 
seemed full of terror. 


31 


RED TOP RANCH 


She curled her little arms about the fence post 
and looked down at the bright rushing water and 
wondered if she would have to stay there until 
she starved and grew faint and fell into the wa- 
ter and drowned. The water was not very deep, 
perhaps she might wade ashore, but then 

“ Oh, dear! Oh, dear! ” sighed Mary. “ How 
dreadful it would be to be killed by rattle- 
snakes! ” 

She clung sobbing to the fence for two long 
hours. The sun climbed high towards the noon- 
day sky, and she began to be very hungry. She 
crept along the fence again and looked at the 
spot where that monstrous snake had laid himself 
down. He was gone, but she dared not step on 
the land where he had been. 

All at once she heard a yelp; Numskull, the 
coyote dog, came bounding around the alder 
thicket and stood wagging his tail in a friendly 
way. 

“ Oh, you lovely dog! ” said Mary, and tears 
rained down her face. 

Numskull wagged his tail harder and stood 
looking at her as if to ask, — 

“ Why in the world don’t you come to land? ” 

“ Good doggie! ” said Mary. “ Don’t let the 
snakes get you, poor doggie.” 

Numskull jumped about and yelped, waiting 
for her to come. At last by the wisdom inherited 


THE RED SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 


on his mother’s side from a family of shepherd 
dogs, he grasped the truth, — this little girl was 
in trouble. Perhaps he thought she was caught 
by her dress and could not get ashore. At all 
events, he came as close to her as he could. He 
plunged into the water and floundered into the 
stream. He went ashore and floundered in 
again. 

Then Mary had a bright idea. She took off 
her red hair-ribbons and tied them together. She 
edged along the fence nearly to the bank, called 
the dog to her and knotted the ribbons about his 
neck. 

“Now, go home! Go home! Go find my 
Uncle Billy,” she commanded. “ When he sees 
this red signal of distress he will come and rescue 
me! Go home!” But Numskull thought she 
was playing with him and did not start, nor did 
he go until he got hungry; then he trotted off as 
if expecting her to follow. Mary could not 
know that when her uncle, going into the house 
for his noonday dinner, saw the dog with the red 
ribbon collar, he only smiled and said to himself, — 

“ It is nice to have a little girl playing about 
the ranch.” 

It was not until Bert came from his dinner, late 
as usual, and later, for he had a string of trout 
for an excuse, that his father asked: 

“ Where ’s Mary ? ” 


34 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ She went with Bert,” answered Mrs. Mer- 
win, serving the pie. “ Is she coming in, 
Bertie? ” 

Bert stood stricken in the doorway. 

“Where is she?” demanded his mother, get- 
ting up from her chair in alarm. 

“ Why — she — I ” Bert stammered. 

“ Now, don’t get scared, mamma,” said Mr. 
Merwin. “ What have you got to say, young 
man? Don’t stand stuttering there!” 

“ I thought Mary came back to the house. I 
went to get my tackle of Charlie. He had no 
business to carry it off. I haven’t seen her 
since.” 

“Since when?” asked Mr. Merwin, sternly, 
rising. 

“ They went out after breakfast,” said Mrs. 
Merwin. “ I supposed of course Mary was with 
you, Bertie, all this time.” 

“ So this is the way you take care of your 
cousin, is it? I ’ll attend to your case, later. 
First thing is, where did you leave her? ” de- 
manded Mr. Merwin. 

“ By the deep pool,” answered Bert. 

“ You ’ve probably drowned her,” growled 
Charlie. 

Mrs. Merwin turned white and sat down on a 
chair. Her husband put his hand on her 
shoulder. 


THE RED SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 


35 


“ Hush your noise, Charlie. Don’t get scared, 
mamma,” he repeated. “ Just call Shep, Fred, 
and we ’ll soon find her. She can’t be very far 
away.” 

Bert rushed out of the house. Fred went to 
call the big shepherd dog, and they all, ex- 
cept Bert, started up the river. For there was 
a deep pool up stream too, and they thought that 
was the one Bert meant. 

Bert, his conscience whipping him, was rushing 
away alone down the river bank to the place 
where he left his cousin. Numskull with the red 
ribbons round his neck bounded at his side. 
Bert found Mary’s footprints in the grass going 
on down for a little way, then at the sands by the 
first shallows he lost track of them. He decided 
that Mary had gone across as he should have 
done at that attractive wading place; so he took 
off his shoes and stockings, and waded across the 
stream. He followed what he thought was 
Mary’s trail, a broken twig here, bent grass there, 
across the island to the Old Channel where in 
their days of friendship he and Charlie sometimes 
mined for helium, gold, or copper ore. When he 
looked round for the coyote dog. Numskull was 
nowhere to be seen. 

Mary’s arms ached, her legs ached; she ached 
from head to foot, but most of all her heart ached. 
She longed to be safe with her Uncle Billy. 


36 


RED TOP RANCH 


Numskull came back to her alone, the red rib- 
bons around his neck. 

“Good doggie!” said Mary. “Did you go 
home? ” 

The dog wagged his tail encouragingly. He 
had had his dinner. Perhaps he wondered why 
Mary did not come for hers. His presence kept 
up her courage. She could not have clung there 
a long hour more without breaking down had it 
not been for the dog. He almost made her laugh 
staring at her with his solemn face, and funnily 
shaped eyes. 

Mr. Merwin did not decide that they were on 
the wrong trail until they had gone past the 
deep pool a mile up stream, as far as the ranch 
of Oggerson, a settler whose house stood near the 
river. Nothing had been seen of Mary and no 
trace of her was found. They met Bert near the 
house when they came back, returning from his 
scouting of the Old Channel region. His father 
was divided between wrath at his son and at him- 
self when he found that Bert meant the deep pool 
down stream. 

Mr. Merwin left the family, starting on foot 
down the bank and throwing a bridle on old 
Harry, a gray farm-horse, trotted down the road, 
through the gate, across the bridge and into the 
lower meadow. 

Thus it was that he came on his horse to the 


THE RED SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 


37 


farther shore, back of the fallen cottonwood, and 
saw Mary clinging to the fence in midstream and 
Numskull capering on the home shore. 

“ Well, I declare that dog knew more than I 
did! ” thought Mr. Merwin. Aloud, he called in 
a gentle voice: 

“ Well, Mary, are you practising to walk 
across Niagara Falls on a tight rope? ” 

She turned a pitiful little face towards him and 
tried to smile. 

‘‘ Oh, Uncle Billy, I am so glad to see you! 
Don’t let the snakes get you! ” 

“ Snakes, my dear? ” 

“Big snakes! big rattlesnakes!” she sobbed. 
“ They are most all on this other side of the 
river ! ” 

“ Well, don’t you be afraid. You stick there, 
honey. Uncle Billy will come and see about 
them.” 

He got down, cut two long, strong, pliable 
whips of alder, and leaving Harry on the farther 
side came out on the fence to Mary. 

“ Poor little darling! How long have you been 
hanging here? ” he said, putting his arm around 
her. 

“All day!” She leaned against him with a 
happy sob, feeling very safe and contented. “ It 
seems like a thousand years.” 

“ Where were your snakes? ” 


38 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Over there.” She pointed. 

“ Well, you stick here a minute, honey. Uncle 
Billy will go and see if he can’t whip them and 
get a rattle for you.” 

“ No, no, don’t leave me! ” She clung to him, 
convulsively. There was nothing for it but to 
take her back the way he had come. Soon they 
were both on old Harry’s back, Mary in front 
with her uncle’s arm round her while they ambled 
along towards home. Numskull, who had 
forded the stream to follow, trotted beside them. 
They had crossed the bridge and gone through 
the gate and were in the open pasture when sud- 
denly they saw writhing across the road in front 
of them a huge rattlesnake. 

“O-oh! There he is!” screamed Mary. 

“Lucky I kept these whips!” said her 
uncle. 

“ Sit still, chick ! ” He sprang to the ground, 
gave Mary the bridle, and just as the big rattler 
raised his head he ran and brought the whip down 
cuttingly on the snake’s head. The snake fairly 
lifted his body from the ground. Again the whip 
came down full force upon him. Mary shud- 
dered and clutched old Harry’s mane while the 
battle went on, and on, blow after blow, thud, 
thud, thud! till the rattlesnake lay quiet on the 
ground. Then Uncle Billy threw handfuls of 
earth on his head, and, stooping, counted his 


THE RED SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 


39 


rattles and picked off the largest one, as if he 
were picking a rosebud. 

“ Seven rattles, and here ’s the biggest one of 
them all for you,” he said, coming back to the 
horse. 

“ No, thank you,” said Mary. “ You — you 
keep it. Uncle Billy. I think you ’re the 
bravest man in the world ! ” 

“ Why, what makes you think that? ” he asked, 
as he jumped up behind her on the horse again. 

“ Nobody else would dare fight a big snake all 
alone like that ! ” 

“ Oh, yes, they would, darling. That ’s the 
way we all kill rattlesnakes in Wyoming. I 
killed one with nine rattles with a buggy-whip 
once. Your aunt has got a belt made of his skin. 
Don’t you want a belt of this one? ” He reined 
in as they were about to pass the dead snake. 

“ No, no, no ! ” shuddered Mary. “ Let ’s hurry 
home. I want my dinner. I never was so 
hungry in my life.” 

It was several days before Mary felt like go- 
ing away from the house. She was not ill, only 
tired, and she felt safer lying on the sofa reading 
a story-book or sitting on the porch steps while 
her aunt sat sewing in a rocking-chair. 

But one morning she saw from the kitchen 
steps a number of horses out in the corral, and 
went across to have a look at them. 


40 


RED TOP RANCH 


‘‘ Well, here you are, Mary,’’ said her uncle 
from the stable door. “ Pick your horse out of 
the bunch. You don’t want to lose any more 
time learning to ride, such a good horsewoman as 
you are.” 

“ All right. Uncle Billy.” 

Mary climbed up to the middle pole of the 
fence and put her arms over the top. “ I choose 
that big gray horse we came home on.” 

“ Old Harry ’s all right. Run him in here, 
Fred, and put Bert’s saddle on him for her.” 

Mary went into the stable and watched her 
cousin saddle and bridle the horse. Then he led 
him out, and her uncle took her foot in his hand 
and she mounted with an easy jump. 

Harry stood still during this process, nor 
did he move when Mary clutched the bridle and 
chirrupped to him to start. Not he! Mr. 
Merwin struck him with a stick, but Harry 
did not stir except to lift one heavy leg pon- 
derously. 

“Bring out Dick, Fred,” said Uncle Billy. 
“Now, Mary, make Harry follow!” 

He jumped on Dick, the carriage horse, and 
trotted off towards the big gate. 

Harry lunged forward, walking slowly after 
Dick. Mary sat upright in the saddle. Fred 
came and handed her a cottonwood stick for a 
whip. 


THE RED SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 41 

“ Don’t be afraid, Mary. Go ’long there, 
Harry! ” he called. 

But Mary was very much afraid. At the 
bridge across the first irrigating ditch Harry 
stopped short again. 

“ Go on, you stubborn brute,” said Mary, hit- 
ting him timidly. 

“Come along, Mary, make him go!” called 
her uncle, well in advance. 

“Hit him again!” called Fred. “Grab 
leather, and hang on.” 

She did not like to strike the horse again. 
“ Come, Harry,” she coaxed, “ please go on! ” 

Fred ran and gave him a good cut, then Harry 
walked rapidly after Dick up to the big gate. 

Uncle Billy showed Mary how to turn him 
around, then Dick struck out on a fast trot for 
the corral. This suddenly filled Harry with 
rivalry. He gave a plunge forward, and broke 
into a long clumsy lope. Mary’s heart thumped 
and she held fast to the saddle. Her uncle 
looked over his shoulder when he crossed the 
ditch and she seemed to him to be all right. But 
instead of crossing the bridge Harry lurched 
suddenly down to the stream for a drink. When 
he stopped heavily, putting his head down for the 
water, it was too much for the girl from the East. 
Over his head she went, splash into the irrigating 
ditch, splash into the ice-cold snow water! 


CHAPTER IV 


THE STAMPEDE 

Uncle Billy came cantering back, shouting 
comfort to Mary. She had fallen into a shallow 
place, against the soft bank ; then quickly scram- 
bled up to solid ground, crying no longer, but 
angry and ashamed. She stood there dripping 
wet, trying to smile and pretend she did not care. 

“ Get home with you,” said Uncle Billy, giv- 
ing the horse a whack with his cottonwood stick 
that sent him trotting towards the corral. “ Well, 
Mary!” He turned to her. “You do look 
damp. Can’t you stick on a horse any better 
than that? ” 

“I can stick on a horse! I stuck on two 
horses all right the day I got here,” answered 
Mary with spirit. “ I don’t call Harry a horse. 
I call him a horrid old cow! Let me get up on 
Dick! ” 

“ Good for you! ” said her uncle and put her 
astride the barebacked horse. But he kept one 
hand on hers as he walked beside, leading Dick 
back to the corral. 


42 


THE STAMPEDE 


43 


Aunt Kate was very sweet and comforting. 
When Mary went to her room to get into dry 
clothes she came up-stairs with her and helped 
her, and told her how she fell off a horse when she 
was a little girl. 

All the rest of that day Mary sat and read. 
She did not care to talk much with anybody, not 
even Bud Todd, who brought her a bunch of 
white cactus flowers, “ ditch-lilies ” he called 
them. She wrote a long letter home at her 
uncle’s desk in the sitting-room, telling her fam- 
ily that she wished they were all there at the 
ranch, and that she was having a splendid time. 
Just as she was finishing the letter, she heard 
through the open window Bert saying to Charlie 
outside : 

“ Mary ’s all right. That girl does n’t tease 
worth a cent.” 

“You bet she’s all right!” said Charlie. 
“ I ’m glad she ’s going to stay all summer.” 

Next day Mary was ready again for whatever 
fun was going. She was out by the milk-house 
with her aunt, when Fred came loping along on 
his own horse Nibs, and reined in. 

“ Come along, Mary,” he called. “ I am going 
up to the big dam this morning. Do you want 
me to saddle Harry for you? ” 

“No, I thank you. Saddle Fireball!” an- 
swered Mary. “ May I ride her. Auntie? ” 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Yes, if you want to. She will take good 
care of you.” 

Away went Mary to the kitchen for some 
sugar, then out to find Fireball who came trotting 
to meet her as soon as she heard her whistle. In 
a few minutes Bert’s saddle was on the mare’s 
back and Mary was riding beside Fred along the 
river road. On the way to the dam they passed 
a field of alfalfa belonging to the settler Ogger- 
son. At a short distance a herd of several hun- 
dred cattle were feeding on the mountain-side. 

“ Those are our steers,” said Fred. “ Father 
had them turned out there just before he went to 
Chicago. It kept us fellows busy mending Og- 
gerson’s fence to keep them out of his alfalfa.” 

“ I should think he would mend his own fence,” 
said Mary. 

Fred’s pleasant gray eyes looked at her with a 
smile in them. 

“You would, wouldn’t you? But Oggerson 
believes in giving other folks all the trouble he 
can. Father ’s too good a neighbor to him. 
Think you ’d like to try a little canter? ” Fred 
shook Nibs’s bridle. The broncho broke into a 
run. Fireball picked up her pretty feet and car- 
ried Mary rapidly after him all the way to the 
dam. The river was wide there and deep. Just 
below the dam the big Pioneer ditch led away to- 
wards the ranches that were watered by smaller 


THE STAMPEDE 


45 


irrigating ditches fed from this large one. In 
the high dry country of the west, this is the way 
men water their meadows where they grow the 
hay that they feed to their cattle during the 
winter-time. 

Mary was very much interested watching 
Fred inspect the dam to make sure that none of 
the water was leaking away. The ride home was 
longer than going, for they returned along the 
side of the mountain and passed the herd of cattle 
feeding below the jack-pines. 

“How strong those cattle look!” said Mary. 

“ You ’d think they were strong, if you hap- 
pened to see them on a stampede,” returned Fred. 

“What is a stampede?” 

“ Well, it is when they all start and run a few 
miles pell-mell as if they were possessed,” an- 
swered her cousin. “ Father has a theory that 
electric disturbances in the air have something to 
do with it, but I don’t know. Bud says it ’s the 
dickens gets into them.” 

“ Did you ever see a stampede? ” Mary asked 
her Aunt Kate as she sat sewing with her again 
next day. 

“ Oh, yes. I have been out on a pony more 
than once helping round up the cattle after they 
have run off,” answered Mrs. Merwin. 

“ I wish you would teach me how to ride beau- 
tifully as you do, won’t you. Auntie? ” said Mary. 


46 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Do you like my riding, chick? Well, we ’ll 
do the best we can for you. First of all we must 
send to Laramie and get a saddle just your size. 
Bert’s saddle is too big for you.” 

“ How perfectly lovely to have a saddle all 
my own!” Mary patted her aunt’s hand affec- 
tionately. “ You are all so good to me.” 

During the week after her new cross-saddle 
came Mary rode Fireball every day. Her Aunt 
Kate rode Venus and taught the little girl how 
to sit, how to hold her whip, and most of all, — 
and this is in the secret of self-control, — to con- 
quer fear of a horse. 

‘‘ But I ’m not a bit afraid of Fireball, 
Auntie,” said Mary. They were riding slowly 
along the river road, side by side. “ And you 
know I was n’t afraid of Tom that first day when 
he ran with me ! ” 

“ Yes, but a good horsewoman must ride al- 
most any horse that ’s offered her. If a horse 
once knows you are afraid there is trouble ahead,” 
said Aunt Kate. “ Don’t you want to jump off 
now, dear, and let me show you a trick I ’ve 
taught Fireball? The boys are always showing 
off on their bronchoes, and I try to keep up with 
them.” 

Mary got off and held Venus’s bridle. Her 
aunt mounted Fireball, and touched her on the 
neck with the whip. Fireball stood up on her 


THE STAMPEDE 


47 


hind legs and began to dance. Mrs. Merwin 
touched her neck and Fireball got down and went 
round and round. 

“ Would she dance that way with me? ” called 
Mary. 

“ Yes, if you touched her just exactly as I 
did,” repliel her aunt. 

“You would n’t dance very hard, would you. 
Fireball? ” coaxed Mary. 

The beautiful animal looked at her with kind 
eyes that seemed to say : 

“ Oh, little tenderfoot, you may trust me! ” 

On the morning of the Fourth of July Mary 
was wakened at sunrise by the sound of pistols 
firing, crackers popping, and dogs barking under 
her bedroom window. She got up and looked 
through the shutters. Her cousin Fred with 
Bud, Jim, and Donnelly, the hired men, stood in 
a row, shooting into the air. Bert and Charlie 
were firing off crackers. 

Mary dressed rapidly; as she hurried down- 
stairs she met her Uncle Billy coming into the 
entry in his dressing-gown. 

“ S-s-h! Mary,” he whispered with a face of 
fun. “Don’t let the boys know we are up. 
We ’ll show them how to make a noise that is a 
noise.” He took down his rifle from the antlers. 
“ Run and bring that gong bell that stands on 


48 


RED TOP RANCH 


the shelf in the wood-shed. Go quietly and bring 
it to your room.” He went on up-stairs. Mary 
hurried and got the big bell and was soon back 
in her room. When her uncle had loaded his 
rifle, he quietly unhooked the shutters. The 
boys were making din enough to waken the seven 
sleepers. Uncle Billy nodded to Mary. 

“ Now, ring when I say three. One, two, — 
three!” 

Mary rang the bell loudly with both hands. 
Her uncle flung open the shutters. Crack went 
his rifle. Numskull ran round and round in a 
circle, yelping wildly. Mary burst out laugh- 
ing. The boys and the hired men stopped short 
and looked up astonished, while louder and 
louder rang the bell. 

Aunt Kate appeared in Mary’s doorway. 

“ For mercy sake, Billy, you are a bigger boy 
than any of them ! ” she exclaimed. 

“ Well, you would n’t expect me to be smaller 
than any of them! ” he retorted over his shoulder. 
He was just firing again. 

Aunt Kate came to the window. 

“Look! Look!” she cried. “I was afraid 
something was going to happen! There are all 
those steers breaking into Oggerson’s field.” 

“ Boys! Boys! ” shouted Mr. Merwin. “ Get 
after your ponies. Our steers are in Oggerson’s 
meadow.” 


THE STAMPEDE 


49 


Pandemonium broke ranks at once. Boys 
and men made haste to get their horses and were 
off to chase out the cattle invading the field up 
river. 

It was nearly nine o’clock when they came back 
to breakfast, but the cattle had all been driven 
out on the open plain. 

“ To-morrow the men must go and mend Og- 
gerson’s fence for him again,” said Mr. Merwin 
as he took the cup of coffee his wife handed to 
him. 

Mary was out on Fireball alone at the end of 
the day, just for a little ride to the gates. She 
had been down to the lower meadow and back, 
and up to the road and was coming slowly to- 
wards the house when she met her aunt strolling 
out to meet her and looking at the sunset. For 
twenty-five miles the whole western horizon 
looked like a series of houses on fire. Big red 
clouds were banked against big white clouds and 
streamed with long red flaming banners up into 
the sky. 

“Look, Mary!” said her aunt. “Long as 
I ’ve lived here, I never get tired of that splendid 
sight.” 

“ It is splendid 1 ” Mary turned Fireball and 
sat looking too, while her aunt stood with one 
hand on the horse’s neck, gazing at the red, white, 
and blue sky. 


50 


RED TOP RANCH 


Over their heads sailed a rocket; it splintered 
far off in all colors and fell to the ground. 

“ The boys are beginning early with their 
rockets,” said Mary. 

“ Come on. Let ’s go up to the lake and see 
the reflections in the water,” said her aunt. 
“Fireball can easily carry two such small people.” 

“ Oh, do let ’s go. Aunt Kate ! It will be such 
fun to ride double,” said Mary. 

Her aunt sprang up behind her. Fireball 
walked to the big gate, then along the main road 
and a half mile out on the plain to a pond 
that Mr. Merwin had made. Slowly they rode 
around the water, enjoying the color and the 
stillness. 

They were returning and had mounted a rise 
of ground above the first buffalo wallow, when 
they heard a sudden roaring sound and saw com- 
ing straight towards them, all running full gait, 
the herd of cattle that the men had turned out on 
the plain. 

At the moment a big scarlet rocket sailed low, 
and the stick fell splintering into the herd. The 
thousand cattle broke into a wild stampede. Mrs. 
Merwin jerked the rein. Fireball whirled round 
on the instant, put back her ears and ran for life, 
for her own life, for Mary’s, and for that of the 
little woman who held her bridle rein. 

“Don’t be afraid, darling!” Mary heard her 


THE STAMPEDE 


51 


aunt say. She could feel her aunt’s heart beat- 
ing against her shoulder. Her own heart 
thumped so that she could scarcely breathe, but 
she patted the mare’s neck softly, murmuring: 

“ Good Fireball ! Good horsie ! Good 

Fireball! ” 

Nearer and nearer thundered the hoofs of the 
cattle. Mary bent forward as the mare ran 
faster. She felt her aunt’s arm tighten about her 
as they flew onward towards the flaming west. 

The good racing blood of her mother Venus 
was up in Fireball’s young veins. She went as 
if shot out of a cannon’s mouth, while close be- 
hind trampled the panic-stricken cattle with the 
force of a cavalry regiment. 

On she went, minute after minute, mile after 
mile, keeping just in front of the rushing death 
behind. The western sky died to pale pink, then 
to gray; the last light of the sun was gone; the 
evening star shone out in the summer sky. It 
seemed like a dreadful dream that would never 
come to an end, the whipping of the breeze on her 
face, the thundering hoofs behind. Mary felt 
herself growing strangely weak. 

‘‘ Oh, Aunt Kate, I ’m going to fall off,” she 
sobbed. “ I ’m going to fall off! ” 

“ No, you ’re not going to fall off,” said her 
aunt in a sharp voice. “No nonsense now! Sit 


RED TOP RANCH 


“Oh, I wish Uncle Billy would come!” 
moaned Mary, while Fireball flew over the plain, 
running just in front of the steers, galloping on 
and on into the night. 


CHAPTER V 


HELPING AUNT KATE 

Mr. Merwin came into the ranch house for his 
supper about sunset; he walked into the kitchen 
with his string of trout, put his head in at the 
dining-room door and said: 

“ Kate, come and see what a fine lot of trout 
I Ve brought you.” 

“ Mother is n’t in the house,” said Fred, look- 
ing up from his book by the dining-room lamp. 
“ She and Mary went off up towards the lake 
double on Fireball awhile ago. All the rest of 
us have had our supper.” 

J ust then Oggerson out by the corral was tell- 
ing the hired men that he had seen the Red Top 
cattle stampeding beyond the lake as he came 
along the road. Bud Todd rushed in with a pale 
face and told Mr. Merwin and Fred. Three 
minutes later they were all galloping off towards 
the plain, silent before the fear and horror in 
their hearts. 

The force of the stampede had just begun to 
lag, the cattle spread out in a straggling column, 
running still, but less wildly, when Fireball 
53 


54 


RED TOP RANCH 


slowed from her wonderful speed, breathing hard 
and covered with foam. Mrs. Merwin’s courage 
began to waver but she clasped Mary closer, and 
urged the mare onward. Even if this should be 
Firebairs last race, the child she held in her arms 
must be kept safe. The brave thoroughbred 
mare, bridle-wise, responded to the call upon her 
and renewed her gait, her fine pointed ears flat- 
tening against her head, as if in resolve to die 
rather than fail them, as on and on she ran. 

Out on the plain suddenly they heard the sound 
of shouting, and in among the steers rode Bud 
Todd and Fred and Oggerson rounding the 
bunch of cattle away from Fireball and her pre- 
cious burden. And up towards the mare rode 
Uncle Billy on Nibs, the broncho’s sides bleed- 
ing where the spurs had been hurrying him on 
for the fastest run he had ever made in his life. 

“Ho! Kate! Kate!” shouted Mr. Merwin, 
hurrying towards them. 

“ Hoo-ooh! ” whispered Aunt Kate, trying to 
answer. She could not speak aloud. 

He galloped up beside, sprang to the ground, 
and caught them both off in his arms. 

“ It ’s a miracle the bunch did n’t run you down 
before we got here,” he said solemnly. 

Aunt Kate slipped to the ground exhausted 
and sat with her arm clasped round his ankle, her 
head against his knee. 


HELPING AUNT KATE 


55 


Mary’s arms went round his neck and her head 
fell on his dear big shoulder. “ Oh, I knew you 
would come,” she whispered, sobbing. “ I knew 
you would come.” 

“We did n’t get here a minute too soon, little 
girl,” he answered. “ Nothing will be too good 
for Fireball after this.” He reached out his 
hand and placed it caressingly on the neck of the 
panting mare. 

Fireball carried only one rider on the slow re- 
turn to Red Top Ranch, — the mistress who had 
loved her all her life, — for Mary stayed in her 
Uncle Billy’s arms till he put the tired and droop- 
ing little girl down upon her bed in her own 
pretty room. 

A few days later Mary was churning in the 
shade of the milk-house when her uncle came up 
to her and said: 

“I’m going to drive up into the hills about ten 
miles this morning with Dick and the buggy. 
Do you know any little girl who would like to 
come along?” 

Mary moved the churn-dasher briskly up and 
down. 

“ I ’d love to go with you, but I can’t leave my 
churning,” she answered. 

“Nonsense! Your aunt usually makes the 
butter when it ’s in that churn.” 


56 


RED TOP RANCH 


‘‘ She is baking some important cake this 
morning. The cook, you see, is washing towels. 
JNIrs. Malley says you and the boys are fiends for 
towels ! ” Mary smiled affectionately up at him 
and stopped churning for a minute. “ Besides, 
you know our secret,” she whispered. “ Auntie 
was crying this morning.” 

Uncle Billy’s eyes grew misty, but he said, 
“ All right for you! So you turn me down, do 
you? Even if you are my girl, you ’ll have to 
whistle for an invitation to go buggy-riding with 
me next time.” 

“ Then I ’ll whistle,” returned Mary cheer- 
fully. “ I have to help Auntie to-day.” 

“All right for you. Sissy! ” Uncle Billy pre- 
tended to frown and stalked away. Mary at 
once set up a loud, clear whistle. He shook his 
head and put his fingers in his ears and hurried 
away. But he threw her a handful of kisses after 
he got into the buggy, and she sent him two or 
three from the tips of her fingers in return. 
Numskull bounded up, thinking that she was 
whistling to him. 

Mary felt very useful and happy churning the 
butter. She had never seen butter made before 
she came to the ranch. It was only a small 
churning to-day. Her aunt had put the cream 
into the old-fashioned stone churn with the up- 
and-down dasher, instead of into the rotary 
patent churn used when there was a quantity of 


HELPING AUNT KATE 


57 


cream. Mary lifted the lid and peeped in at the 
rich white cream. It was growing thicker and 
full of bubbles. She felt a funny, excited feel- 
ing in her throat. 

“ I do believe the butter is beginning to come ! ” 
she said aloud, staring in at it for a moment, fas- 
cinated. Then down went the cover again and 
splash went the dasher, up and down, up and 
down. In a minute or two Mary longed to look 
at it again. 

“ I ’ll wait till I count a hundred strokes,” she 
said. “ One, two, three! ” and she went gaily on 
to a hundred. Then she peeped in. No change. 
‘‘ Five hundred ! ” Another peep below the 
dasher. Big round bubbles, thick puffy cream. 
‘‘Five hundred again!” A third peep. “Oh, 
oh, oh! Aunt Kate, do come. Come, come!” 

Mrs. Merwin appeared in the kitchen door with 
a broom-straw in her hand. 

“ The butter is all cuddled up to the dasher, 
and up and down the sides of the churn! ” cried 
Mary excitedly. 

Mrs. Merwin waved her broom-straw and dis- 
appeared. After a little while she came out with 
her white sun-bonnet on her head. 

“ I was just trying my cake when I heard you 
call,” she said. “ I thought something had 
happened.” 

“ It has, it has! Just look! ” Mary proudly 
showed the butter. 


58 


RED TOP RANCH 


“Good! The butter came quickly for you. 
You haven’t been churning more than twenty 
minutes. Sometimes I have churned for an hour 
when I could n’t get the cream at the right tem- 
perature. It obeyed the thermometer this 
morning very nicely.” 

Mary ran into the milk-house and got the big 
wooden bowl and ladle for working the butter, 
pumped the cold water over them, drained it off 
and brought them cool and fresh to her aunt. 
Mrs. Merwin carefully dipped out all the butter 
from the churn into the wooden bowl. She 
scraped off the bits on the dasher, then she carried 
the bowl into the milk-house. 

“ Now, I must run back to my cake in the 
oven,” she said. “You can work the butter for 
me till I can come.” She went out and shut the 
door. Mary stood on tip-toe and industriously 
worked the wooden ladle, watching the white 
buttermilk ooze from the yellow butter with great 
interest. She worked it for several minutes, 
then her aunt came back and finished the task, 
making the butter into rolls, printing each one 
with a wooden stamp that made a picture of a 
sheaf of wheat. 

“ Now, we must go and set that white hen. It ’s 
a comfort to have you here to work and play 
with me, darling,” said Mrs. Merwin. 

“ I ’m glad,” said Mary, and slipped her little 
hand into that of her aunt. 


HELPING AUNT KATE 


59 


They went out to the poultry yard and from 
nest to nest collecting fresh eggs. On one of the 
nests sat a small reddish brown hen with a de- 
termined look in her eyes ; she stuck out her head 
and gave Mary a peck on the arm as she reached 
into the next nest for three fresh eggs. 

“ Leave one of those for a nest-egg, Mary,” 
said her aunt. “Brownie, behave yourself!” 
and she tapped the head of the irate little hen 
with a stick. 

“ I thought you shut her up the other day,” 
said Mary. 

“ I did. Bert must have let her out. I have 
been trying to break up her nest for weeks. For 
mercy sake! ” 

Out from under the little brown hen squeezed 
a fluffy chicken and toddled along the board in 
front of his mother while she ruffled her feathers 
proudly and clucked and clucked. 

“ She has hatched a nest-egg! He’s a nest- 
egg chicken,” exclaimed Mary. 

“ Well, I never saw one before in all my life,” 
said Aunt Kate. “ Is n’t he strong! He must 
have been one of those eggs left over when 
Blackie came off with her brood the other day. 
Yes, I did leave one in that nest for a nest-egg.” 

“ As soon as we set old Whitie we ’ll go and 
get some food for Brownie’s baby, won’t we. 
Auntie? ” said Mary. 


60 


RED TOP RANCH 


After this surprising interruption they went 
on collecting until they had fifteen fresh eggs in 
the tin pan that Mary carried. She stood hold- 
ing it while her aunt put them one at a time under 
the white hen, who ruffled her feathers and 
clucked and pecked, then settled down content- 
edly on the eggs. 

They were turning away when they heard a 
loud fussy clucking and calling as of a hen in 
distress. Mary followed her aunt, who hurried 
over to the side of the poultry yard next the river 
and stood there beside the fence with an expres- 
sion on her face, half amused, half pitying. 

A large speckled hen stood on the brink of the 
river, clucking and calling anxiously, while out 
on the quiet water of a pool floated her brood of 
yellow ducklings, enjoying themselves immensely. 

“ Mother, may I go out to swim? ’’ laughed 
Mrs. Merwin. “Poor old lady! This is the 
first time she has seen her darling daughters go 
out to swim, and she does n’t know what to make 
of it.” 

“Are the ducks hers?” exclaimed Mary, in 
surprise. 

“ Yes. I put duck’s eggs under her. I al- 
ways feel sorry for a hen with ducks when they 
go into the water. But a hen is a better mother 
on land than an old duck. She will scratch more 
for worms and things for them.” 


HELPING AUNT KATE 


61 


Mary watched the ducklings paddling about. 

“ They float like water-lilies, don’t they? ” she 
said. 

“ I suppose so. We don’t see many water- 
lilies out here. Your uncle says there is a tiny 
snow-water lake up in the high mountains where 
this river rises that he has seen fairly covered 
with water-lilies for a few days at a time in Au- 
gust. The snow water up there is so cold that 
the lilies don’t live long when they get a chance 
to blossom.” 

As Mrs. Merwin and Mary went back towards 
the house they met Bert running to find his 
mother. He looked worried. 

“Ma!” he called. “Come quick. The lit- 
tlest lamb has busted himself ! He ’s here by 
the bunk-house.” 

“ Oh, dear, dear! ” she said. “ Run and find 
Bud Todd, Bertie 1 ” she called in return, and 
hurried to the bunk-house. There in the shade a 
lamb lay dead on the ground. Its little sides were 
puffed out like an air-cushion. Bud Todd came 
hurrying with Bert. 

“No use, Mrs. Merwin. It has stuffed itself 
to death all right in that blamed alfalfa.” 

“You’re the one to blame, Bertie. You 
promsed me to keep the lambs out of the alfalfa.” 

“No, ma; it’s this fellow’s own fault. He 
made a grand sneak on me. It ’s his own fault,” 


62 


RED TOP RANCH 


replied Bert. ‘‘ He squeezed through a place in 
the fence too small for him.” 

“ Well, you must get poles and make that 
place too small for any of the others to get 
through. We ’ll go and count the rest of them, 
and see if they are all there. 

“ It ’s too bad, poor lamb,” said Mary, with 
quivering lips. 

Bert looked at her. “ It ’s not my fault any- 
how,” he muttered doggedly. 

Five happy lambs were enjoying life in the 
lot beyond the barn where they belonged, not 
missing their brother who had got away 
and eaten himself to death in the alfalfa 
field. 

“ I missed him, and I found him, and I lugged 
him to the bunk-house,” sighed Bert. 

‘‘ Well, Bud will bury him. Don’t talk any 
more about it, Bertie,” said Mrs. Merwin. 

“ This is n’t a sheep ranch anyhow,” muttei’ed 
Bert. 

In the cattle country of Wyoming ranchmen 
seldom raise sheep; the few sheep at Red Top 
were kept in limited quarters, for where sheep 
have nibbled grass the cattle cannot feed again 
for at least two years. 

“ Come along, Bertie, let ’s go and feed your 
bottle-colt again,” said Mary. “ I love to see 
him eat.” 


HELPING AUNT KATE 


63 


“ All right. But it was that lamb’s own fault 
he busted himself! It wasn’t my fault.” 

Mrs. Merwin went on into the house. After 
Mary had helped Bert feed his colt, she went in 
and joined her aunt. She helped make the beds, 
and dusted the sitting-room. Then they sat 
down and hemmed some kitchen towels until the 
cook came and said that dinner was ready. Mrs. 
Malley, the cook, was a tall, pale, silent Mis- 
sourian, of middle age, who had lived at the ranch 
for nearly a year. After dinner Mrs. Merwin 
and Mary went to visit the grave of little Nelly. 
It was on the island meadow, not far from a 
ruined old log cabin. Uncle Billy had made a 
white picket fence around it and the little place 
was planted with wild rose-bushes. Mary slipped 
her hand in her auntie’s and listened with love 
while she told her of the sweet ways of the little 
girl who was gone. 

It was sunset when Uncle Billy came home. 
Mary was out with her aunt helping strain the 
new milk and put the pans up on the shelves in 
the milk-house when he came and looked in at 
the door. 

“Goodness, girls! Hasn’t that butter come 
yet? ” he asked. 

“Yes, years ago! I’m glad you’ve come 
too,” said Mary. She trotted over to him, and 
put up her face for a kiss. “ There ’s hot 


64 


RED TOP RANCH 


biscuits with butter on them that I churned. 
Yes, sir!’' 

“ I ’ll bet it ’s the sweetest butter ever 
churned,” said Uncle Billy, giving her a hug with 
the kiss. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 

Mrs. Merwin was busy at her sewing machine 
in the sitting-room. Mary was curled up near 
her in a corner of the sofa playing checkers with 
Charlie one day when Bud Todd came into the 
room. He brought her three wild strawberries 
on a grape-leaf. 

“ Compliments of the season, Miss Lloyd,” he 
said taking off his sombrero. ‘‘ I thought maybe 
you might like to taste the first fruits of the 
earth.” 

“ Thank you very much. Bud,” Mary smiled 
up at him. “Aren’t they pretty I Won’t you 
take one yourself? ” 

Bud looked gratified. 

“ I like better to see you eat ’em. Fact is — ” 
he stood on his other foot, and hesitated. “ Fact 
is, I have been wanting to tell you for some time 
what a comfort it is to see you around as usual.” 

“ How nice of you ! ” Mary beamed at him. 

“ Yes. It did look to me that night you went 
off herding steers on the plain that we might not 

5 65 


66 


RED TOP RANCH 


see this little girl round this ranch any more. 
There ’s quite a bunch of mavericks out on the 
plain, I hear,” he added. 

“What are mavericks?” asked Mary. 

“Any animal is a maverick that runs out wild 
till he ’s a year old or more without anybody’s 
brand on him. He is public property after a 
year’s time.” 

“ Can anybody get him? ” asked Mary. 

“ Yes, if they can run and catch him,” an- 
swered Bud with a grin. “ You have to pay five 
dollars into the school fund when you rope him 
and then he ’s yours. They say it ’s a good-look- 
ing lot of wild horses that ’s come down from the 
hills. I ’m figuring on riding out to see if I can 
get sight of them.” 

“ I wish I could go! ” Mary stood up, her face 
alive with interest. 

“ You ask your aunt her opinion on the sub- 
ject,” said Bud. 

“May I go with Bud, Aunt Kate?” she 
asked. 

“ No, indeed! ” answered Mrs. Merwin. “ I ’m 
not going to have you riding out into a bunch of 
wild horses. Bud would forget all about you 
and be off trying to rope one of them.” 

Bud twirled his hat in his hands. 

“ I ’m not figuring on roping any horses to- 
day, ]Mrs. Merwin,” he said. “ I ’m just going 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 67 


to take a look, and see if Oggerson’s boy was giv- 
ing it to me straight. If I do locate a bunch of 
mavericks, I was calculating I ’d not lack for 
company to rope one. Maybe you would go 
along and look after Mary, you two riding the 
two mares, ma’am? ” 

Mrs. Merwin laughed. 

“ Take her along. Bud. Saddle Fireball and 
take her along for a scamper. But I trust to 
you. If you see the mavericks within a mile, you 
must make tracks for home.” 

Bud sighed, humorously. 

“ Nobody ’d believe it of me, so I ’m safe to 
promise,” he said. 

Mary and Bud rode out on the plain, he on Tom 
the broncho, she on Fireball. They turned to the 
left and cantered slowly toward the hills, the 
breeze blowing in their faces as they rode. They 
had gone three or four miles, and had mounted 
a hillock above a ravine when they saw about 
five hundred yards away feeding on the tender 
grass, ten or a dozen wild horses. In less time 
than it takes to tell it the horses threw up their 
heads and were off into the teeth of the rising 
wind. 

“ See ’em go ! Don’t they run like a bunched 
blizzard on the half -shell! ” exclaimed Bud, rein- 
ing in. 

Suddenly one of the wild horses, a mouse- 


68 


RED TOP RANCH 


colored broncho, stopped running and began to 
feed again. 

‘‘ Little rat! He hates to leave good fodder,” 
commented Bud. 

The other horses disappeared up into the hills, 
but this broncho went on feeding. Mary and 
Bud rode slowly towards him. 

“ He ’s what we call a buckskin, that color of 
pony,” said Bud as they drew nearer. “ I take 
it he ’s the leader.” 

“ Does he know the rest will come back if he 
stays here? ” asked Mary. 

“ Right you are! You ’re cute enough to be a 
Wyoming girl,” replied Bud, admiringly. 

They rode quite near to the little buckskin 
broncho. He went on feeding peacefully. 

“ Blamed if he ain’t the outlaw from Sheep 
Mountain! He acts as gentle as if he belonged 
in the corral,” remarked Bud. “ Well, that ’s 
where you ’re going to bring up, yet, bronk, do 
you hear? ” 

Mary pulled the rein for Fireball to go on, but 
the wise mare stood still, putting her pretty ears 
forward nervously. 

“ Blessed, if I don’t hate to leave that 
bronk unroped out here,” said Bud, “ but we ’ve 
got to make tracks for the ranch and get 
after this bunch first thing in the dewy 
morning.” 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 69 


“ Are n’t you afraid they will all be gone to- 
morrow?” Mary exclaimed. 

“Not much! Not they!” Bud replied. 
“ When a bunch like this once gets down from the 
hills they hang around for grass and water some- 
times for a week or two. Well, so long, bronk! 
See you later. My love to the folks.” 

Bud waved his hat round his head, whooped 
and started on a gallop for home, while Mary 
cantered after. The truth was he had a very 
good rope on his big saddle and he dared not look 
at the outlaw another instant lest the desire to 
throw a noose over him should prove too strong. 
Nobody knew better than the old cowboy how 
unsafe it would be for the little girl on the 
thoroughbred should he and Tom get into a fight 
with that little buckskin broncho. 

There was excitement at the ranch when Bud 
and Mary got back to the house and told the news 
of the outlaw seen with the mavericks up by the 
ravine. He was a well-known horse once owned 
by an Easterner who had moved back East to 
Iowa after the outlaw had nearly killed a man 
who tried to ride him. 

Fred and Charlie wanted to start out with new 
ropes that night, but Mr. Merwin overruled 
them. A sunrise start was planned for all, mas- 
ter and men, sons and neighbors, for Oggerson 
and his boy were to join in the pursuit. 


70 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary was perched on the arm of her uncle’s 
chair in the sitting-room after supper. 

“I’m going with you to-morrow,” she said. 

“ You are, are you? Going to ride old 
Harry? ” 

“ You need n’t try to tease me.” Mary 
pinched his ear. “Aunt Kate and I are going 
on Fireball and Venus to watch you all catch the 
buckskin broncho.” 

“ I don’t believe you ’ll like it, pussy,” he said 
with a sober face. 

“Why don’t you believe I’ll like it?” asked 
Mary. 

“ Do you want me to tell you? ” 

“ Yes, of course.” 

Uncle Billy pulled her pretty blond head 
against his face and whispered: 

“ Because my little tenderfoot has a tender 
little heart.” 

“ What do you mean? ” she whispered. 

“ Take my advice. Don’t go! ” he whispered 
back seriously. 

“ Oh, but I want to I I could n’t stand it, I ’d 
be so disappointed if I had to stay at home. 
Aunt Kate has promised to take me.” 

“Well, go to bed then, and get your beauty 
sleep. You ’ll have to be up before daylight 
to-morrow.” 

He lifted her down, pretended to slap her, and 
pushed her from him. 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 71 


“ It ’s only half past seven! I don’t want to 
go to bed so early, Uncle Billy,” she protested. 

“ Well, you must go to bed. You have been 
leading the strenuous life ever since you came to 
Wyoming. You must go to bed and get rested 
if you are going out broncho-busting with me.” 

“ Yes, Mary, go to bed,” put in her aunt, who 
was sewing an elastic on Mary’s riding-hat beside 
the sitting-room lamp. 

“Are Charlie and Bert going to sit up? ” Mary 
looked enviously at her cousins, both deep in a 
book on either side of their mother at the table. 

“No. Those young men will go to roost as 
soon as they finish their chapters. Come, give 
me a good-night.” 

Mary obeyed, but she felt a sense of grievance 
as she went up-stairs, with her bedroom lamp in 
her hand. In Wyoming too it seemed children 
could not always do as they liked. She un- 
dressed, hurried through her prayers and got into 
bed, intending to stay awake until she heard Bert 
and Charlie come up-stairs. 

Next thing she knew she heard her aunt’s voice 
saying: 

“Mary, Mary, it’s half past seven!” 

“ Yes, I know it is! ” she replied, sitting up. 

Aunt Kate stood smiling in the door, her hat 
on her head, her crop in her hand, dressed in her 
cross-saddle riding-habit. 

“Why, it’s morning!” exclaimed Mary. 


72 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ I thought you were up, getting breakfast. 
I had mine long ago and I Ve been taking care of 
the milk. I sent Bert to call you.” 

“ He did n’t call me. I never heard him if he 
did.” 

“ Well, hurry and get dressed. I ’ll go and 
see that there ’s something ready for you.” 

Mary jumped out of bed and was soon dov/n 
in the dining-room. 

“Has Bud gone?” she asked anxiously. 

“ Everybody has gone,” said Aunt Kate. 
“ Your uncle said for us to ride across towards 
Sheep Mountain. If he sees the outlaw with the 
wild horses they will cut him out of the bunch and 
run him down that way.” 

It was a brilliant morning, and birds were sing- 
ing as they left the big gate behind, and struck 
out across the unfenced plain towards Sheep 
Mountain. Aunt Kate looked very pretty that 
morning in her green riding-habit against 
Venus’s brown coat. Mary sat erect, riding Fire- 
ball. She looked and felt very happy. It was 
fun to see the dainty way Fireball stepped 
around the gopher holes that dotted the plain. 
When she cantered, she sprang over them as 
sure-footed as a cow-pony and much more 
graceful. 

It was seven miles straight across the plain to 
Sheep Mountain. They had gone about half 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 73 


way when Aunt Kate reined in, and Mary fol- 
lowed her example. Fireball whinnied excit- 
edly, for towards them galloped nine horsemen 
and boys in pursuit of one little broncho, running 
like a deer. Mr. Merwin stood up in his stir- 
rups, shouting and beckoning. Mrs. Merwin 
understood, and calling to Mary to ride ahead 
they made a quick detour, got out of the way of 
the wild horse, and rode to meet the friendly 
galloping ponies that quickly surrounded them. 
They turned Venus and Fireball about and rode 
on in company of the men and boys who were 
after the wild horse. 

Bud suddenly dashed out in front and threw 
his lariat. The long-noosed rope swung snake- 
like through the air and fell upon the broncho. 
For a minute Mary thought it was round his 
neck, but the animal only flung up his heels and 
ran onward. Bud and Donnelly, Jim and Ogger- 
son’s boy rode round him and headed him back 
towards Mr. Merwin and his sons and Oggerson. 

“ Keep behind us, now girls ! ” called Mr. 
Merwin to his wife and Mary, and he went for 
the broncho, throwing his rope as he rode full 
speed. The broncho half stopped and began to 
kick in every direction at once it seemed to Mary, 
who stood up in her stirrups in excitement, watch- 
ing him flght for his liberty. 

It was a wonderful flght that he made, one 


74 


RED TOP RANCH 


little horse against five men, four boys, and nine 
cow-ponies, every pony trained to stand and hold 
a rope as in a vise when once its noose went round 
the body of an animal roped by the rider he bore. 
The buckskin broncho ran in every direction, in 
vain. He kicked and bit at the horses that came 
near him. He doubled and dodged the great 
ropes that sizzed through the air and swished after 
him. Bud’s rope caught him at last and went 
round his quivering body. A powerful jerk from 
Bud’s iron arms, a plunging pull of the pony he 
rode was answered by the little buckskin with a 
thrashing, kicking plunge, while the tightening 
rope burned into him as he still fought on. The 
more he struggled the more he tangled himself in 
the rope. Up rode Fred and roped him with a 
second noose. He reared and bucked and kicked. 
Then Bud jerked him again. At last he was 
thrown, and lay on his side on the earth. Bud 
sprang to the ground and sat down on the bron- 
cho’s head, while he knotted his red neckerchief 
about the wild and starting eyes. Mr. Merwin 
and Oggerson got down and hobbled the bron- 
cho’s feet, and Mr. Merwin got a hackamore 
ready to put round his neck. Then they all 
pulled him up on his feet again and began trying 
to get a saddle on his back. Mrs. Merwin gal- 
loped forward to the group, but Mary sat still 
on Fireball; both were trembling. 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 75 


“ You feel sorry for the poor horse, too, don’t 
you? ” murmured Mary, patting Fireball’s neck. 

Bud got up on his pony and galloped over to 
Mary. 

“ What makes you stay over here by your lone- 
some ? ” he inquired. 

“ Why don’t you take some sugar in a pan and 
coax a horse to come up to you? ” demanded 
Mary. 

Bud looked at her with curiosity, then he 
grinned. 

“ Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said politely. 
“ Busting bronks with sugar plums ain’t ever 
been the fashion in Wyoming.” 

“Don’t you want to set the fashion?” asked 
Mary sweetly. “ I can spare some of Fireball’s 
sugar for the poor little horse.” She produced 
three lumps of sugar from the pocket of her little 
brown linen riding- jacket and held them out on 
her palm. Her blue eyes were shining. 

Bud pulled his face down. 

“ Well, now, honest, I can’t just seem to see 
myself feeding sugar to that there electric bell off 
the front door of — perdition,” he said. “ Talk 
about sulphur broth and chain lightning ! He ’s 
just been giving me as pretty a fight as I ever 
had with a horse, but all the same the boys might 
be jealous if I went to handing him out candy.” 

“ Very well, I will give it to him myself,” said 


76 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary with dignity. She touched Fireball and 
rode over to the group about the captive. Bud 
following. She slipped to the ground. 

“ Hold Fireball for me please, Bud,” she said; 
then she started to walk up to the buckskin with 
the lumps of sugar, but her uncle swooped from 
his saddle, and gathered her up in his arms. It 
was none too soon, for the buckskin was rolling 
like mad in the ropes that bound him, struggling 
blindfold in terror and darkness, feeling the sad- 
dle on his back just cinched round him by three 
pairs of hands. Tears started in Mary’s eyes. 

“ Don’t be silly, Mary,” said her Aunt Kate, 
coming beside them on Venus as her uncle put 
Mary back on Fireball. “ This is the way they 
always tame bronchoes.” 

“ I don’t see why,” said Mary. “ I don’t be- 
lieve any horse needs to be choked and beaten and 
thrown around like that. Why couldn’t they 
run him home and into the corral, and then let us 
feed him sugar through the fence till he got 
friendly? I don’t believe you ever let them snarl 
Fireball up in cruel ropes that way! Just feel 
how she quivers I She does n’t like it any better 
than I do. Come, Fireball, let ’s go talk to the 
poor horsie. Let ’s tell him he has two friends.” 

Mary started to ride towards the broncho, but 
her aunt seized her bridle. 

“ Don’t be silly,” she repeated. “ Your uncle 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 77 


won’t let you come out to see them rope a horse 
if you act this way.” 

“ I feel sorry for the horse,” said Mary with 
quivering lip. 

At that moment Bud made a sound of pain. 
He had been putting the hackamore round the 
broncho’s neck, and the beast had contrived to 
bite his thumb. 

I feel sorry for Bud Todd,” said Mrs. Mer- 
win. “ He does n’t usually howl when he is 
hurt.” 

“Bud!” called Mary. “Come here and let 
me tie up your thumb.” She was making a 
bandage of her handkerchief as she spoke. Bud 
came over watching her with a pleased look 
as she deftly tied up his bleeding thumb. 

“ I ’ll never go after a bronk again unless you 
come along to repair damages,” he said. “ Will 
you? ” 

“ I ’ll see about it,” said Mary with tact. In 
her heart she knew that she would never willingly 
go after a wild horse again. 

“ Come, Mary, I ’ll beat you home,” called her 
uncle from Nibs’s back, and she gladly dashed off 
with him across the plain. 

I knew you wouldn’t want to see the boys 
drag that bronk home, little tenderheart,” he said, 
when first they slowed to a walk. 

“ You are the best uncle alive,” said Mary, 


78 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ You ’re my girl! ” he returned, and side by 
side they rode happily along. 

As they drew up at the stable door the cook 
came hastily out from the kitchen, putting on her 
blue-checked sunbonnet as she ran. Mrs. Mal- 
ley was usually quiet and rather pale. Now her 
face was flushed, her tongue stammered as she 
said very fast: 

“ Mr. Merwin, the sheriff has been ringing the 
telephone for you. Some young men broke 
out of jail at Laramie, and the telephone is out 
of order; I told him maybe you would ride 
up to Pine Landing and telephone from 
there. 

“Did the sheriff say who broke jail?” Mr. 
Merwin asked. 

“ One of them is that Rap Nottinger that ’s in 
for shooting a cattle thief. The other is a fellow 
that belongs over in Colorado.” 

“ Who is he? What is his name? ” 

The woman looked down, then up. Her face 
had queer streaks of color on it. 

“ I forget. That is The telephone is 

out of order. You can’t make out what folks 
say,” she replied. 

“ You heard his name? ” asked Mr. Merwin. 

She shook her head nervously. 

“ I was most scared to death! ” she answered. 
“ Besides, I was baking my bread when the tele- 


THE LITTLE BUCKSKIN BRONCHO 79 


phone rang, and I worried for fear it would 
burn.” 

Mr. Merwin frowned and looked thoughtful. 
He glanced at Mary, who had slipped to the 
ground and stood by Fireball’s head. 

“ Do you mind leading your mare down to the 
river and giving her some water when she cools 
off a little? ” he said. “ I guess I ’ll have to ride 
on to Pine Landing and telephone from there 
and see what the sheriff wants. You tell Bud 
Todd about this as soon as he gets here,” he 
added, speaking to Mrs. Malley. 

She nodded, then as he galloped away on Nibs, 
she burst into tears and ran sobbing into the 
house. Mary’s heart ached to comfort her, so 
she tied Fireball to the fence and hurried after 
her into the kitchen. 

As Mary entered the room with soft footsteps 
she was surprised first not to see the cook, then 
to hear the sound of voices overhead. Mrs. Mal- 
ley’s room was a large unfinished room compris- 
ing all of the low second story above the kitchen, 
from which it was reached by a narrow stairway. 
The door of this stairway stood open. Mary 
went to it, intending to call the cook, but as she 
reached the bottom step, she heard the sound of 
a man’s voice saying earnestly: 

“ Please mother, don’t cry like that ! I tell 
you honest, I did n’t do it. If I did kill him, I 


80 


RED TOP RANCH 


would tell you just the same mother, — ^you! 
But honest I did n’t. It was some other fellow 
that answers my description. You help me get 
away, mother, and you ’ll never be sorry. I ’ll 
make tracks off down to New Mexico, and I ’ll 
get a nice little home for you there and I ’ll send 
for you. You don’t want me to go to jail, and 
maybe get hung for what I did n’t do.” 

It all flashed clear through Mary’s mind, Mrs. 
Malley had sent Mr. Merwin up to Pine Land- 
ing to telephone to gain a little time for her son. 
She loved her son. She wanted to save him. He 
was accused of a crime that he had not com- 
mitted! Mary was sure of that from something 
in the tone of his voice 1 She turned and walked 
straight through the kitchen to the dining-room, 
and rang the telephone bell. 


CHAPTER VII 
Mary’s strange secret 


“ Please give me Pine Landing,” said Mary 
when Central answered the telephone. “ Yes, 
this is the Red Top Ranch. Yes. Please tell 
Mr. Merwin when he comes to call up his own 
house and speak to Miss Mary Lloyd before he 
calls up the sheriff. Yes! — before he calls — the 
— sheriff.” She rang off, turned round and ran 
out of the house. 

It was very still as she went through the kitchen. 
She knew that they must have heard her at the 
telephone. She was not exactly afraid, but she 
felt safer out of doors and in the saddle. She 
untied Fireball, got on her back and rode round 
the kitchen wing under the cook’s window. 

“Mrs. Malley!” she called. No answer. 
“Mrs. Malley answer me! I heard your son 
talking. I am going to help him if I can.” 

Mrs. Malley’s tear-stained face appeared at 
the window. 

“ Your uncle told you to water your horse. 
What are you doing in the house?” she said 
sullenly. 

8i 


82 


RED TOP RANCH 


‘‘Don’t speak to me like that!” answered 
Mary. “ I tell you I am going to help you. Tell 
your son to come to the window.” 

Mrs. Malley withdrew. All was silent. After 
a minute or two, Mary called: 

“ Mr. Malley! I hope you are not afraid of a 
little girl. If you are, I believe you ought to be 
in jail.” 

Quick as a flash the young man was leaning 
out of the window. He was sunburned and 
rather nice looking. On his face was a black 
stubbly growth of beard. 

“ How do you do, miss. You are a game one, 
I must confess,” he said. 

“ Your mother deceived my uncle about the 
telephone,” said Mary, “ but I will overlook that 
if you will promise to go right away from this 
house.” 

“ Sure ! I ’ll clear out as quick as I can get 
the chance. They ’re after me for something I 
did n’t do though.” 

“ I understand that,” said Mary. “ But you 
must think quick. What do you want to do? ” 

“ I want to stay hid here in my mammy’s room 
till everybody ’s asleep to-night. Then I ’ll 
make off if she ’ll give me some money to help 
me when I strike a railroad.” 

“ He knows I can’t ask for my money out of 
time,” said his mother, her face appearing over 


MARY^S STRANGE SECRET 


83 


his shoulder. “ I told Mrs. Merwin to keep my 
money for me till interest day. It ’s all in her 
bank in Laramie.” 

“ I have twelve dollars,” said Mary. ‘‘ Will 
that be any help to you? ” 

The young man looked astonished. 

“ You bet it will! I ’ll send it back to you as 
soon as I get a job.” 

“ Very well. I ’ll give you my address at 
home. Mrs. Malley, please go to my top bureau 
drawer in my room and get my pocket-book for 
me, and bring it here.” 

Mrs. Malley obeyed. At the kitchen door, she 
handed the pocket-book to the girl in the saddle. 
Mary gave her the money. 

“ God will bless you for this, Mary Lloyd,” 
said Mrs. Malley solemnly. 

“ Tell your son to keep very quiet till to-night,” 
said Mary. “ I won’t say a word, and nobody 
ever goes up into your room. You can give him 
his food up there.” 

“No danger but he ’ll keep quiet enough.” 
Mrs. Malley disappeared into the house. 

Mary turned Fireball about, and was walking 
her in the direction of the river when she was sur- 
prised to see her uncle galloping towards home. 
She rode to meet him with a strange, almost 
guilty feeling in her heart. Her intuition told 
her that she was doing right, yet she felt confused 


84 


RED TOP RANCH 


at taking such a responsibility, and her con- 
science kept pricking her to tell her uncle all 
about it. But she did not dare do that. 

“ I decided to come back again and see if our 
telephone really is out of order,” he said. “ I 
don’t like the way Poll Malley acted.” 

Mary said nothing. She had not believed that 
the telephone was out of order when the cook first 
said so, but it had taken a little longer for the 
doubt to enter her uncle’s mind. She did not go 
into the house with him. She would not show 
too much interest. He came out presently. 

“Just as I thought!” he said. “Job Malley 
is the name of the other fellow that the sheriff ’s 
after. He describes him as about six feet tall, 
young, with a short, black beard. You have n’t 
seen any one like that hanging round here, have 
you?” He smiled, meaning a joke. 

Mary turned pale. 

“ There, dearie, don’t be frightened. But I 
shouldn’t wonder if Mrs. Malley knows more 
than she pretends. I guess I ’ll get my guns. 
The sheriff and a posse of four are on their way 
out from Laramie. They will be here to dinner. 
I must tell Mrs. Malley to get ’em up a good one. 
They ’phoned from the office that they are going 
to beat up our woods and over the mountain to- 
night and want some of us to help them. Why, 
Mary, dear child, you are trembling all over. 


MARTS STRANGE SECRET 


85 


Come, let uncle lift you down. Nothing shall 
hurt you, darling.” 

‘‘I am not afraid,” said Mary. “No, thank 
you, I guess I ’ll stay on Fireball. I will ride 
up towards the big gate and meet Aunt Kate 
when I see her coming.” 

“ You ’ll see some tall broncho hauling, as Bud 
brings in the buckskin,” warned her uncle. 

“ Well, then I ’ll look in the other direction.” 
Mary put up her chin and trotted away. 

Her uncle looked after her for a moment. 

“ Women are queer kittle-cattle, — even kid 
women! ” he said to himself. Then he went into 
the kitchen, where Mrs. Malley was peeling po- 
tatoes for dinner. 

“ Cook, there will be at least five extra men 
here for dinner, the sheriff and his posse. Get 
them up a good dinner. I ’ll go out and wring 
some roosters’ necks for you.” 

“ Yes, sir. All right.” 

“ Look here. The telephone is working per- 
fectlv well. The other jail-breaker’s name is 
Job Malley.” 

“ Is it? ” Her face was impassive as usual. 

“ What made you tell me the phone was out of 
order? Is Job Malley any kin to you? ” 

“ The telephone would n’t work for me. It 
hardly ever will. Besides, I was afraid my 
bread would burn.” 


86 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mr. Merwin turned and went out of the house. 

Upstairs Job Malley sat on the floor, behind 
the calico curtain that hid the corner where his 
mother hung her dresses. He was sitting there 
when the sound of the sheriff’s arrival came, and 
the noise of the men bringing the buckskin to the 
corral. He crouched as nearly motionless as pos- 
sible, while the good smells of his mother’s cook- 
ery reached him. During the silence that fol- 
lowed the arrival, he knew that his pursuers were 
eating their dinner in the dining-room. It was 
nearly three o’clock before his mother had a 
chance to bring him any food. He devoured it 
eagerly, not daring to whisper a word. 

Mary Lloyd ate no dinner that noon, and 
scarcely any supper at night when she sat down 
with her aunt and cousins at the table. Her 
uncle was away with the sheriff and his posse 
looking for Malley and Nottinger. 

“ What ails you, Mary? ” asked Aunt Kate. 

“ Any Indians been scaring you? ” asked Bert. 

“ Not one,” replied Mary. 

“ You look like a spook, all white about the 
gills,” said Charlie. 

“Are spooks white about the gills?” retorted 
Mary, trying to speak gaily. “ That must be 
what ails me. Auntie.” 

Her aunt looked at her shrewdly, but said 
nothing. She saw that the little girl had some- 


MATirS STRANGE SECRET 


87 


thing on her mind, but supposed it was nothing 
more than her morning’s excitement over the 
buckskin broncho. 

Mary went early to her room, but lay wide 
awake listening, listening. It was after mid- 
night before her uncle and Bud Todd returned. 
She was greatly relieved that the sheriff and his 
men were not with them. She went to the front 
stairs in her wrapper and bed shoes when she 
heard her uncle go to his room. She crept softly 
down. His door was ajar. The light shone 
within. Aunt Kate was sitting up in bed. 

“We got Nottinger all right,” Mary heard her 
uncle say. “ He was in that tumble-down cabin 
up the creek where old man Cox used to hang 
out. Malley got away.” 

“I’m glad of it!” said Aunt Kate. “I’ve 
been talking to cook as you asked me to, and 
though I could n’t get much out of her, I suspect 
he may be some relation of her dead husband.” 

“ But suppose he shot and killed a man? ” 

“ Well, I guess his conscience will trouble him 
enough if he did. I wish Rap Nottinger had got 
away too. He used to work for my uncle up in 
the Big Horn country.” 

“ That settles it,” said Uncle Billy, and closed 
the door. 

Somehow Mary felt much relieved for what 
she was about to do because Aunt Kate said she 


88 


RED TOP RANCH 


was glad that Malley had got away. She at 
least would not condemn her. When the house 
grew quiet at last, and she knew that the family 
must all be asleep, Mary went down through the 
house and up the kitchen stair. 

“ Mrs. Malley! ” she whispered at the head of 
the stair. 

“ Yes,” came a whisper back in the darkness. 

“ Your boy can come now. You can let him 
out of the kitchen door and lock it after him. 
And, Mrs. Malley ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Fireball is in the corral. Tell him an old 
bridle is hanging just inside the stable door next 
the corral on that side. If he wants to, he can 
ride her till daylight, and then turn her loose. 
She will come home.” 

“All right.” 

“ Thank you miss.” The young man had 
crept across the floor on all fours. His face was 
on a level with Mary’s as she stood on one of 
the upper steps. 

“ You will get your twelve dollars back from 
me through my mother,” said Job Malley. 

“ All right. Are you ready? Well, come.” 

Mary heard the sound of a kiss as Job bade his 
mother good-bye. Then Mrs. Malley came down- 
stairs without her shoes, her son followed with 
his shoes in his hands. A moment later he was 


MARY'S STRANGE SECRET 


89 


out in the cool, dark night, free. Mrs. Malley 
locked the door, and hurried to her own room. 
Mary stole back to hers and peeped through the 
shutters. She could see the figure of the man 
in the corral. Breathlessly she waited, hoping, 
fearing, longing to see him go softly away on 
Fireball, certain that the mare would return. 
But he disappeared and she went to her 
bed. 

'Job saw that the mare was a thoroughbred; he 
dared not risk borrowing a horse of her value, 
even with Mary’s permission. He might be seen 
and accused of stealing the mare. There was an- 
other horse all alone in the other corral, back of 
the barn, a little broncho, of no great value, a 
horse with skinned places on his hide and a tired 
droop of his head. Malley got the bridle on him, 
not without difficulty, and led him down to the 
shallows, over to the island and a little way up 
the bank. Then he got on his back, or tried to 
get on. The outlaw took the bit in his mouth, he 
plunged and reared, and bucked and rolled. He 
shook off his would-be rider ; he shook the broken 
bridle over his head and made away across the 
wire-fenced meadow into the night. Malley sat 
still on the river bank with a badly sprained 
ankle. Only for a moment, then he got up and 
tried to limp away. It was no use. The foot 
was swelling fast. He crawled to the stream and 


90 


RED TOP RANCH 


got it into the cold water. That made it feel 
better; he staggered on dragging it along, but 
soon saw that this was hopeless. He crawled 
into the roofless enclosure of logs, the one-roomed 
log cabin now filled with blossoming wild roses, 
that had been William Merwin’s home when he 
took up his first section of government land, 
twenty years before. 

As soon as daylight came Mary was out at the 
corral. Fireball was still there. She whinnied 
to greet her young mistress and came and put 
her nose through the fence. 

“Poor man! I suppose he was afraid you 
would whinny and wake up the people,” said 
Mary. She sighed as she thought of her twelve 
dollars, and patted FirebalFs nose. The truth 
was, she had been longing to ask Aunt Kate if 
she would sell Fireball to her. She had dreamed 
of asking her if twelve dollars would not do for 
a first payment and if she could write home and 
ask her father’s consent to the purchase. She 
knew that the mare was worth several hundred 
dollars; but the value of money was not clear in 
Mary’s mind. She had never had so much as 
twelve dollars of her own at one time before in 
her life. This was put in her purse when she 
left home and she had had no occasion to spend it. 

Fireball whinnied again. Mary climbed up 
on the fence to pat her better. Now she could 


MARY^S STRANGE SECRET 


91 


see into the small corral. The buckskin broncho 
was gone. She understood at once. 

“ Poor man! He thought he had better bor- 
row the outlaw! I do hope that broncho has n’t 
killed Job Malley! ” 

She climbed down and went and inspected the 
ground. The broncho’s tracks led into the river. 
Mary crossed the bridge to the island. Off to- 
wards the Old Channel she saw the buckskin 
peacefully feeding. She did not dare to go in 
his direction, so she went up the bank past little 
Nelly’s resting place, as far as the ruined cabin. 

She saw how the wild roses had begun to come 
into bloom since last she passed this way and 
thought how sweet they looked and smelled. She 
would pick a bouquet for the breakfast table. So 
she scrambled over a fallen log and was just go- 
ing to jump down beside the tangle within when 
she saw the black-bearded young face with anx- 
ious dark eyes looking up into her own. 

“ Oh! ” cried Mary, and caught at the old door 
post for support. “ Mercy, how you scared me! ” 
Then she gave him a smile. 

“You scared me first good and plenty,” Job 
Malley smiled back. “ I ’ve broke my foot, I 
guess. I can’t get away. Luck seems to be 
dead against me.” 

“ Don’t be discouraged,” said Mary. “ If you 
deserve to get away, you will. You do deserve 


92 


RED TOP RANCH 


to, don’t you? ” She looked sweetly down at 
him. 

“ I ain’t done no wrong to nobody, if that ’s 
what you mean,” said Malley. “ I ’d take my 
Bible oath on that, sissy.” 

“ Well,” said Mary, “ you stay here and I ’ll 
bring you your food till we see what is going to 
happen. Something nice must happen for you 
if you deserve it.” 

“ It ’ll be a pleasant change from so far since 
I struck Wyoming,” said Malley, grimly. “ They 
took me up as I was footing it over from Colo- 
rado to see my mammy and landed me in 
Laramie jail.” 

Malley remained hid in the old cabin. It was 
a wonder that neither Bert nor Charlie discov- 
ered him, but they both went into Laramie with 
their father the first day he was there. On the 
second, as it chanced, neither their work nor play 
took them in the direction of the old cabin. It 
was a place where the hired men never had oc- 
casion to go. Unless they had been specially 
searching for him, Malley might have lain con- 
cealed there for a long time. 

Mary had little difficulty in carrying food to 
him. She was in the habit of roaming about the 
place, feeding hens, carrying pans of Indian 
meal to young chickens, or playing at trout-fish- 
ing; so that nobody noticed her when she went 


MARTS STRANGE SECRET 


96 


over to the island with the basket or pan that 
Mrs. Malley prepared. The cook grew thin with 
worry. She dared not go near her boy for fear 
of rousing question at such a change from her 
usual habits as a stroll across to the island. Bud 
Todd and Donnelly, on horseback, dmve the 
buckskin back into the corral, supposing that of 
course he had jumped the fence. 

Mrs. Merwin noticed the pallor of Mary’s face 
and felt certain that she was acquainted with the 
Malley for whom the sheriff and his men were 
still searching. 

Those days seemed very long to Mary. Her 
strange secret weighed heavily on her mind. 


CHAPTER VIII 

THE NEW HIRED MAN 

Two days went by. Every time Mary looked 
at her uncle she felt as if the secret would choke 
her; she could not meet his glance. And he who 
was always kind, seeing that she was in some sort 
of trouble, was more tender towards her than 
ever, so that Mary began to love him with one of 
those affections which last a lifetime and are our 
dearest bonds on this earth where we dwell. 

Mary was sitting on the sofa, the second even- 
ing, watching her uncle as he read his Laramie 
newspaper that Fred had brought from the rural 
mail box. 

“Jove, Kitty! Listen to this!” Mr. Merwin 
exclaimed to his wife; and read aloud: 

“We are enabled to announce that Job Malley 
who escaped from jail with Rap Nottinger the 
day of Nottinger’s escape and recapture, de- 
served the liberty he grabbed by the throat and 
wrested from fate on that occasion, evading the 
bloodhounds of the law.” 


94 


THE NEW HIRED MAN 


95 


“ That ’s the sheriff and you,” interpreted 
Aunt Kate with a smile. 

Uncle Billy puffed his lips, then read on, not 
noticing the little figure tense and alert on the 
sofa across the room. Mary listened, her heart 
thumping wildly: 

“ Malley is the living image of Pad Dickey, 
the fellow the Denver sheriff telegraphs to the 
authorities that he has captured ; so Malley, wher- 
ever he is hiding goes scot free of the crime that 
Dickey confesses, for Dickey is the murderer of 
Bone Billgus.” 

“ The murderer!” exclaimed Aunt Kate. 

“Oh! oh!” wailed Mary. She flung herself 
across the sitting-room, cast herself on her Uncle 
Billy’s broad breast, her arms about his neck, and 
sobbed as if her heart would break. 

“What on earth is the matter?” cried her 
aunt. Uncle Billy soothed and petted her in 
silence until she lifted her face and said between 
tears and smiles: 

“ Job Malley is hid out in your old cabin. I 
knew he did n’t hurt anybody.” 

“ In my old cabin! Well, I ’ll be — jiggered! ” 
Her uncle held her out on his knee and gazed at 
her in amazement. “ What sort of a viper is this 
I am cherishing in my bosom? ” He shook her 
a little, but his voice was so gentle and his eyes 
so full of affection that Mary took courage and 


96 


RED TOP RANCH 


told the whole story. He listened in silence, but 
her aunt kept asking questions. 

When Mary had finished. Uncle Billy repeated 
thoughtfully : 

“ Well, I ’ll be jiggered! ” He drew Mary’s 
head down on his shoulder and sat thinking for 
a few minutes. His wife sat looking at him with 
understanding, her sewing neglected in her lap. 
It was she who spoke first : 

“ If you do, Billy Merwin, you ’ll just have to 
build on another room to the bunk-house for Bud 
Todd. He is crowded enough already with Jim 
and Donnelly both in that room.” 

“ It ’s a big room, ma’am. I don’t mind if 
you do get up a wireless on my thinking machine, 
and tap my secret thoughts. You need n’t look 
so smart, ma’am. I always did admire you more 
than anybody I know, unless it is my girl here.” 
He stood Mary up on the floor, shook her, smiled 
at her, and showed his teeth. “ I ’m a big ogre,” 
he said, “ I ought to eat you alive, miss, for har- 
boring suspected criminals and trying to condone 
felony. Well, what do you say to my hiring Job 
Malley to stay and work for us here at the 
ranch? ” 

“ Oh, won’t that make his mother happy! ” 
Uncle Billy picked up the newspaper. “ Come, 
let ’s give her this,” he said. 

“ Yes, and let ’s get a lantern so that Job can 


THE NEW HIRED MAN 


97 


see where to walk in the bushes,” said Mary. 
“We will go out to the old cabin and round up 
her progidle son.” 

“ When you say ‘ round up her progidle son ^ 
so sweetly I ’d give you half my kingdom, if you 
wanted it,” said Uncle Billy. “ Come along and 
get the lantern, you jail-breaking little horse- 
thief, you!” 

When M alley heard them and saw the light 
approaching, he groaned, feeling that now he 
would be taken back to the jail. 

Mary called to him, — 

“Don’t be scared. You are all right! It is 
in the newspaper that you are all right. Uncle 
Billy wants you to be our hired man.” 

Malley climbed up and looked over the wall of 
the roofless cabin. 

“Is it so, honest?” he asked as Mr. Merwin 
drew near. 

“ It is true, Malley,” Mr. Merwin answered 
gravely. “ You are a free man. I guess we can 
And plenty of hard work for you when your foot 
gets all right if you want to stay on with your 
mother here at the ranch.” 

“ Mother is a good cook,” said Malley simply. 
He climbed out then, and hobbled towards the 
house, helped by his new employer. At the 
bridge, Mrs. Malley met them. 

“ My son, oh, my son! ” she cried. She came 


98 


RED TOP RANCH 


up to her boy and put her arms around his neck. 
Mary and Uncle Billy hurried away, hand in 
hand, to the house. When Mary was alone in 
her room that night, Mrs. Malley came and 
brought back her twelve dollars. 

“ Job says to thank you just as much as if he 
had used it,” she said. 

“ Tell him that ’s all right,” said Mary. 

Job Malley ’s foot got well rapidly in his moth- 
er’s good care. He was useful indoors and out, 
hobbling about on the crutch he made of a cotton- 
wood pole. The other hired men never tired of 
joking him about his effort to ride the buckskin 
broncho; they were always offering to bring the 
outlaw for Malley to take a ride. 

Mary was out near the old cabin after break- 
fast one morning, with the dogs at her heels as 
usual, when Job Malley came limping up the 
river bank with his fishing tackle, and began 
whipping the stream for a big gamey trout that 
had just darted into view. He was not long 
landing him. When the trout was added to his 
string, Mary went down to the bank and pro- 
posed a plan that had come into her pitying heart 
as she saw how lame Job was. 

“ Does n’t it hurt your foot to walk? ” she 
asked him. “ Don’t you want to just sit quietly 
down on the grass and let me go and get a book 
and read to you while you are fishing? ” 


THE NEW HIRED MAN 


99 


J ob kept a solemn face, though his black eyes 
twinkled. 

“ Well, the trout would hke to hear you read, 
first rate,” he said. 

‘‘ Oh, very well ! If you don’t wish to hear 


“Well, you see, I’m ” Just then a fine 

brook trout took the fly. Job forgot everything 
else in a lively battle to land him. As he lost 
his fish he became aware of a small stern person 
standing near. “Well, you see I’m not much 
on book-learning myself,” said Job. He was 
wishing with all his heart that Mary would go 
away. She was disturbing the fish. 

Mary, indignant, said not a word, but walked 
away towards the house. She thought that she 
had done so much for Job Malley that he really 
might have accepted her offer to entertain him. 
She did not know that there are few such fisher- 
men on earth as her uncle, who would sit on the 
bank near the bunk-house in the dusk of evening 
and chat with her while he reeled in trout enough 
for breakfast. She took the path to the narrow 
plank over the inlet on her way to the bridge. 
In her vexation she did not walk carefully, or 
perhaps it was because the board was slippery 
from dew. At all events, Mary suddenly found 
herself floundering in two feet of water. She 
had stepped off the plank. Tears of anger were 
UOFC. 


100 


RED TOP RANCH 


in her eyes as she scrambled out to the bank. 

Shep and the hounds were trotting on uncon- 
cernedly ahead. 

She crossed the big bridge and as she left it 
she met her uncle from whom sympathy might 
have been expected. Instead he said: 

“Well, you look like a drowned rat. Been 
swimming all by your lonesome? ” 

Mary made no answer but ran past him and 
into the house by the back door. As she went 
through the sitting-room on her way to the stair, 
her aunt said: 

“ For goodness sake Mary, you are dripping 
on the rugs! What has happened to you? ” 

“ The rugs first, not me! I might have been 
drowned ! ” thought Mary bitterly, as she fled 
without answering to her own room. As she 
changed to dry things and hung her wet clothes 
over the towel rack, she cried angrily, wishing she 
were at home. When she went down-stairs again, 
her wet shoes in her hand to dry them in the sun, 
she tiptoed so that her aunt should not hear her. 
She went softly around the corner of the house 
and came face to face with Charlie, who was 
eagerly waiting for her. He spoke in a very low 
voice : 

“ Father told me you went swimming all 
alone,” he said. “ Why did n’t you tell me? I ’d 
have taken you over to the Old Channel.” 


THE NEW HIRED MAN 


101 


Mary smiled; she could not help it. Charlie’s 
comradeship was welcome in her sad mood. 

“ I did n’t think of it,” she whispered, not tell- 
ing him that her bath was unexpected. 

‘‘ Well, I ’ll take you over there some other 
time,” said Charlie. “ Let ’s go up river and 
sing. Job Malley is up there fishing and it will 
make him mad.” 

Here was a comrade indeed! Mary laughed. 

“ I always sing when the new hired men go 
fishing,” Charlie went on. “ It makes ’em half 
crazy to have the trout disturbed. Bud Todd is 
the only one that ever ducked me. Malley won’t 
dare, on account of you. Will you come? ” 

“ Yes, of course I ’ll come,” said Mary heart- 
ily. She and Charlie went demurely out, fol- 
lowed by the dogs. Mary felt the wrathful 
pleasure of revenge as she and Charlie strolled 
up the bank singing together: 

The star-spangled banner, oh, long may it wave 

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave ! ” 

Charlie had reckoned wrongly on J ob’s 
patience under affliction. The fisherman paid no 
attention to them until they were close upon him. 
Then he turned, lunged at Charlie, and tried to 
grapple him with such evident intention to duck 
him that he and Mary ran away as fast as they 
could go. At a short distance, fenced in, was a 


102 


RED TOP RANCH 


haystack where the red top grass of the island 
meadow had been stored for the winter feeding 
of cattle. It took but a short time for the child- 
ren to reach this redoubt. They stormed the 
castle, climbed the fence, then the boy aiding the 
girl, scrambled to the top of the stack and sat 
there panting in triumphant retreat. 

Mary looked at Charlie with so much admira- 
tion for his courage that he was moved to pro- 
pose sliding down the haystack. Now, this was 
one of the few things for which the Red Top 
boys had every one been punished. The slide 
down a haystack meant tearing off its carefully 
arranged outside layers, uncovering it to rain and 
wind, and exposing to the weather tons of hay 
needed for the cattle when snow lay deep on the 
ground. But Charlie had started leading his 
willing cousin into mischief, and nothing could 
stop him now. He slid down several times him- 
self, until he had made a good slide. 

“ Come on, Mary! ” he cried then, and held out 
his hand to her. 

Mary came. It was great fun, that quick 
precipitous slide to the ground and the soft pile 
of loosened hay. Then came the scramble to 
the top and the slide down again. Over and over 
again the two children climbed up and slid down 
until the great stack was in a wildly disordered 
state. 


THE NEW HIRED MAN 


103 


Job Malley came hobbling to them, his string 
of trout over his shoulder. 

“ You ’ll catch it, kids! ” he called. Mary pre- 
tended not to see him. Charlie put out his 
tongue. Just then in the distance they saw Mr. 
Merwin coming. He was on Nibs, riding leis- 
urely down beside the stream after an inspection 
of the dam. The children slid quickly to the 
ground. 

“ Come, we must hide 1 ” Charlie seized Mary’s 
arm and dragged her into an alder thicket. 
“ Dad always has a fit over his haystacks.” 

“ Job Malley will tell him we slid the hay 
down,” whispered Mary. 

“Hush-sh!” was Charlie’s only reply. 

Mr. Merwin galloped up on Nihs. His re- 
marks at the condition of the haystack were 
strong and to the point. 

“ Where are those confounded boys, Malley? ” 
he inquired. 

Mary trembled; she expected to hear Job tell 
her uncle that she had helped do this thing. She 
expected to see a look of anger at herself cross his 
face. 

“ I ain’t seen any boys,” replied Malley, truth- 
fully enough, as he had seen only one boy. 

“ I saw somebody on top of the stack not two 
minutes ago ! ” cried the master of the ranch. 

“ Well, can’t a poor lame fellow like me get up 


104 


RED TOP RANCH 


and slide down a haystack a few times to amuse 
me if I ’ll turn in and fix it up again as good as 
it was before? ” said Malley. 

Mr. Merwin stared at his new hired man for an 
instant. Then his amazement cooled in amused 
understanding of the situation. Perhaps he saw 
the flutter of a little pink dress in the alders. 

“ Well, Job, you choose very strange ways to 
amuse yourself,” he said slowly at last. “ But 
I suppose you feel bound to stick to your friends. 
I ’ll go and get two pitchforks,” and he rode 
away. 

Mary and Charlie emerged from the thicket 
and darted over to the concealment of the cotton- 
woods by the stream. When Nibs came back 
with his rider and the pitchforks, the children 
were safe in the shelter of the old cabin. There 
they remained until the stack had been put in 
order again and Mr. Merwin and Malley had 
gone. 

“Dad smells a mouse about the stack. We 
better not go to the house for dinner until he has 
had time to get done eating,” Charlie advised as 
he waded about with his shoes on in the cold shal- 
lows of the inlet, and Mary stood admiring him 
on the shore. 

“ I ’m so hungry,” pleaded Mary. 

Just then Job Malley appeared. 

“ I ’ve been looking over that old cabin,” he 


THE NEW HIRED MAN 


105 


said to Mary, as if nothing had happened. “ I 
can fix up a roof of boughs for it, and I can trans- 
plant the wild roses to outside for you, and put 
in a floor of poles chinked with grass and make a 
grand play-house for you, — if you ’d like it? ’’ 
“Oh, Job!” cried Mary. “That would be 
perfectly splendid! I wonder if my uncle would 
mind.” 

“ I asked him,” said Job. “ He said to go 
ahead if it would please you.” 

“ Charlie,” said Mary suddenly, “ I ’m going 
into the house to have my dinner with your father. 
I ’m going to tell him I ’m sorry! ” 

“All right for you,” said Charlie. “ That ’s 
just like a girl! ” He waded gloomily off into 
the shallows of the river and Mary walked slowly 
towards the house, accommodating her footsteps 
to the slow pace of limping Job Malley. 


CHAPTER IX 

ELIZABETH COMES 

In a few days the old cabin was transformed 
into the most delightful playhouse that you can 
imagine. 

INIalley grubbed out the wild rose-bushes with 
such care that their roots came with them and so 
much earth that they went on blooming gaily on 
either side of the path which led up to Mary’s 
lodge. He roofed it over with pine boughs, and 
made the floor of poles, chinked with dried sweet 
grass. 

Aunt Kate contributed three breadths of rag 
carpet, woven hit-or-miss; this covered the mid- 
dle of the floor. Uncle Billy fitted in some old 
window frames from the bunk-house at the one 
window; over its glassless panes Mary hung a 
frilled curtain of pink and white muslin. 

On the afternoon that Mary moved in, no less 
than eight people crossed the bridge and went 
up the island carrying things for the log play- 
house. Uncle Billy led the way loaded with 

io6 


ELIZABETH COMES 


107 


soap-boxes for camp-stools. Fred carried a can- 
vas cot which was to be Mary’s sofa; Bert, red 
cushions stuffed with sweet clover hay. Charlie 
shouldered the basket of chipped and cracked 
dishes Aunt Kate had sorted out from the pantry 
and china closet. Job Malley had an armful of 
boards; he intended to nail these fast to the four 
poles driven into the ground in the cabin, to form 
an immovable table. 

Aunt Kate had a little bamboo shelf and half 
a dozen story books, while Mary carried some- 
thing in a basket carefully covered with a napkin, 
and the cook followed carrying a large glass 
pitcher. 

It was surprising how cosy the playhouse 
looked, when everybody had been busy for half 
an hour. 

“I declare!” said Uncle Billy, sitting down 
on the table as Job Malley finished it. “ I de- 
clare, this seems like home. I lived here alone, or 
with one hired man, for seven years when I .first 
came out to Wyoming.” 

“ Would n’t it be nice if it was now, so I could 
keep house for you? ” said Mary, from the depths 
of the barrel armchair Job had made for her the 
day before. 

“Yes, that would be all right,” he replied. 
“ Do you happen to have anything to eat in that 
pantry of yours? ” He looked at the shelves 


108 


RED TOR RANCH 


where Charlie had just been helping Mary ar- 
range her dishes. She rose smiling and uncov- 
ered the basket she had brought. 

“ Old Mother Hubbard has nothing in her 
cupboard, but how will this do?” she inquired, 
putting on the table beside the cook’s pitcher of 
iced lemonade a big molasses layer cake covered 
with chocolate icing. 

“ Whoop! ” yelled Charhe suddenly. 

“ Mercy! ” His mother put her fingers in her 
ears. 

“ Those are my sentiments too, thank you,” 
said Uncle Billy. 

Mary cut the big cake Mrs. Malley had 
made for her housewarming and passed it 
around, a happy hostess, while everybody ate 
and drank. 

This was the beginning of many pleasant 
hours at the log house. Mary liked to go up 
there to write her letters home. She was there 
finishing a letter to Edith just before sunset one 
afternoon when Charlie came along the river- 
bank with a rainbow trout he had caught a little 
way up stream. 

“Hello, Mary!” he said, appearing in the 
doorway. “ Where ’s the kitchen to this resi- 
dence? Have you got such a thing as a fry- 
ing-pan? ” 

As Mary looked up from her letter he came in. 



At the log house 


i 


^ '■ 0 * . 

Bp f 


I 



ELIZABETH COMES 


109 


“ Can I have this? ” Charlie took from a shelf 
a square tin box half full of oat-meal crackers, 
and answered his own question by pouring the 
crackers on the table and going out of doors with 
the box. 

Mary jumped up. 

“ Why, Charlie Merwin, how dare you come 
and rob my house before my face and eyes ! ” she 
exclaimed, following him out of doors. 

“ I thought I could start you up,'’ he said, put- 
ting his trout down on the grass, and proceeding 
to break the tin box open with a stone. “ This 
will make a fine frying-pan. Squaw, go pick up 
sticks for a fire. Big injun 's going to clean this 
fish for a fry." 

“Oh, Charlie, won’t that be fun! A real 
camp-fire! We’ll cook our supper. I’ve got 
some apples for dessert.’’ 

She flew over to the nearest thicket and re- 
turned with some twigs. 

“Call those firewood!’’ growled Charlie, and 
putting his trout up in the fork of a cottonwood 
tree, he went over to the thicket himself, Mary 
trotting beside him. When they came back with 
their arms full of good-sized sticks, both fish and 
pan had disappeared. The sun had gone down, 
and the sky was gay with color, but no one was to 
be seen. 

“ Bert! ’’ called Mary. “ Where are you? ’’ 


110 


RED TOP RANCH 


A rustling sound in the cottonwood tree an- 
swered. They looked upward. 

“ Come down with my things, young un, or 
you ’ll wish you had! ” threatened Charlie. 

“ You ’re invited to supper, Bertie,” coaxed 
Mary. 

A shower of twigs and leaves was the only 
reply. 

“Monkey! Stay up your tree! I can catch 
plenty more trout.” Charlie began laying the 
dry wood up in a zig-zag pile. When Mary went 
into the cabin to get a match for him there were 
none to be found. 

“ I thought I had some matches,” she said 
indignantly. “ Bert ’s taken them too. All 
right for you, mister!” She stamped her foot 
and addressed the dark object high among the 
branches. “ Charlie and I will just go into the 
house, and you can stay out here and cook your 
own supper all alone.” 

They strolled slowly away. Bert promptly 
slid down to the ground and lighted the fire. It 
roared up gaily in the deepening dusk, and look- 
ing back from the shadows of the alders they saw 
him calmly cleaning the fish. 

“ Good job,” said Charlie. “ I ’ll bet you 
have n’t got any salt or bacon? ” 

“ No.” 

“ I ’ll sneak for the kitchen and make a haul 


ELIZABETH COMES 


111 


from Ma’am Malley, and get back by the time 
he gets it done, and then we’ll see!” Charlie 
hurried away. 

Mary tip-toed up behind Bert. The leaping 
tongues of fire, the long shadows on the grass, 
were like a scene in a fairy pantomime. Suddenly 
over in the river came a thumping muffled sound, 
and Bert dropped the fish and bounded over to 
the river-bank, Mary at his heels. A black, thick 
back showed in the deeper water, disappeared, 
showed again, and was off down stream, Bert 
rushing away through the thickets in pursuit. 
Mary went back to the fire. She threw on more 
sticks, and until Charlie came back stood watch- 
ing the blaze leaping up with the delight that 
only an outdoor fire can give. 

“How did you get rid of Bert?” asked 
Charlie, as he finished cleaning the fish and put 
it with some bits of bacon on his cracker-tin 
frying-pan. 

“ A fat, dark thing flapped by in the river — ” 
began Mary. 

“Whew!” whistled Charlie. 

“And Bert dropped everything and ran, — ” 
she went on, “ and I — ” Then she stopped, for 
with a bound bigger than Bert’s Charlie was off 
and away down the river bank, and she was left 
with the trout sizzling on the coals of the fire. 
She took a long stick for a fork and turned it 


112 


RED TOP RANCH 


over when it began to brown. She ran into the 
cabin and brought out her apples and crackers, 
but no boys appeared. Instead she heard from 
across the river the voice of her uncle shouting : 
“Mary, Mary! Is that you over there?” 

“ Yes, Uncle Billy.” 

“ Are the boys there? ” 

“ No-o!” 

“ What under the sun ! ” She heard a crash 
through the bushes, then a splash in the shallows, 
and Uncle Billy, half a dozen trout on his string 
and in the tall rubber boots he wore when fishing, 
came wading across to her. 

“ Well, you are an enterprising young lady, 
starting up camp-fire here all alone ! ” he ex- 
claimed. “And supper, too, I declare! Well, 
that fish of yours looks good.” 

“ Sit down there,” commanded Mary, pulling 
the frying-pan out of the fire with her long stick. 
“ Now, promise not to go running off without 
a word, and I 'll tell you all about it. You 're in- 
vited to supper. Promise ! ” 

“ I promise.” He dropped on the grass and 
picked up a fresh twig. “ Pass the fish, please.” 

Mary poked the pan along the grass towards 
him, gave him a cracker, and told him, 

“ Now, what made those boys run off from 
such lovely fish as this?” she asked, with her 
mouth full. 


ELIZABETH COMES 


113 


“ A beaver,” answered Uncle Billy. “ You 
can’t blame them, Mary. They won’t catch him, 
but they ’ll be trying to for the next hour. It 
was n’t just the right way to run off from a lady’s 
supper table.” 

“ I don’t care,” said Mary, “ as long as you 
have come. Uncle Billy. And I am glad I saw 
a real beaver. It will be lovely to finish up my 
letter to Edith to-morrow.” 

It was during the first week of August that 
Mary had a great surprise. A horse and buggy 
turned in at the big gate one afternoon as she sat 
stringing beads in the porch with her aunt. They 
thought at first that it was a friend of Mrs. 
Merwin’s from Laramie, but as the buggy crossed 
the bridge of the big ditch, Mrs. Merwin said: 

“ I never saw those people before.” 

“ Elizabeth! and her father! ” exclaimed Mary, 
springing to her feet. Her beads dropped from 
her lap to the floor. Her thimble rolled off the 
edge of the porch to the ground. “ It ’s the girl 
who was on the train to Chicago. See ! she ’s all 
in white, with white shoes ! ” 

“Senator Wright! Dear, dear!” exclaimed 
Mrs. Merwin, rising. “ I wonder why he did n’t 
telephone from town!” 

The livery horse from Laramie drew up in 
front of the house. 

“ How do you do! ” called Elizabeth from the 


RED TOP RANCH 


114 < 

buggy. She looked Mary over with a smile at 
her worn shoes and the old gingham frock she 
happened to be wearing. 

“Hello!’’ replied Mary in a surprised voice. 
Then more politely, “ How do you do 1 Mr. 
Wright, let me present you to my aunt, Mrs. 
Merwin.” 

He got out, and shook hands, while Elizabeth 
sat still, looking Mary over. 

“ How did you happen to come, Elizabeth? ” 
asked Mary, standing by the buggy wheel. 

“ Oh, I ’m just travelling with my father,” re- 
turned Elizabeth. 

“ My husband will be delighted to see you,” 
Mrs. Merwin was saying to Mr. Wright. “ I ’ll 
have your horse taken around to the stable at 
once.” 

“ Thank you very much, Mrs. Merwin,” he 
said. “ I hope you got my message ? I tele- 
phoned from Laramie when I decided to get off 
there instead of going on to Rawlins.” 

“ Our wire may be out of order. I did n’t get 
your message. But never mind; it is all right. 
We ’re very glad to see you. Won’t you get out, 
my dear?” Mrs. Merwin spoke to Elizabeth; 
then to Mary, who was patting the horse, — “ Run 
and find your uncle, Mary.” 

“ Father, will you turn the wheel, please, so I 
iwon’t get my dress dusty,” said Elizabeth. 


ELIZABETH COMES 


115 


She stepped daintily out of the carriage, while 
Mary, trying not to smile, gave the horse one 
more pat, and vanished around the corner of the 
house, laughing as soon as she was out of hearing. 

“ Elizabeth Wright is here, and she ’s putting 
on airs, and Aunt Kate wants you to come 
quick!” said Mary, rushing around the corner 
of the tool-house where her uncle sat on a log in 
the shade mending something that belonged to 
his mowing machine. 

He did not stir. 

“ Can’t your aunt make her stop putting on 
airs without my help? ” he asked. 

Mary laughed. 

“ I mean Aunt Kate wants you to come be- 
cause the Senator did n’t go to Rawlins and tele- 
phoned from Laramie, but the wires got crossed.” 

“ Well, I should say your wires seem to be 
crossed too! What’s all this about the Senator 
and putting on airs? ” 

“Oh Uncle Billy, you’re so funny! Now, 
listen, little boy! ” She shook her finger at him. 
“ Miss Elizabeth Wright, of Chicago, has 
brought her father out to Wyoming. She has on 
white shoes and she’s used to travelling, and 
they ’re on the front porch with Aunt Kate, and 
Auntie wants you to come and see about the 
horse.” 

Uncle Billy went on with his mending. 


116 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Your friend Bud is over there by the mow, 
unloading hay. Go and tell him to bring the 
horse around,” he said. “ Then you go and get 
the company into the parlor and shut the door.” 

‘‘ What for? ” asked Mary. 

“ Come here and I ’ll tell you.” 

Mary came close. He whispered in her ear 
with a great show of secrecy : 

“ Your aunt would never forgive me if Sena- 
tor Wright should see me in these blue overalls. 
I want to sneak through the sitting-room to my 
room and make myself presentable.” 

“ You ought to have seen Elizabeth look at 
my old frock!” laughed Mary. “Aunt Kate 
said for you to come.” 

“ There it is again! A married man has to 
mind his wife.” 

Mary laughed. 

“ Stop laughing, child ; it ’s a serious matter. 
Go and tell your friend Bud to get your friend 
Elizabeth’s horse.” 

“There he goes!” she answered. For Bud 
had seen the arrival, and was already on his way 
towards the front of the house. They saw Bud 
go and lead the horse around and take him out of 
the buggy; then Aunt Kate’s voice was heard 
calling from the kitchen door. 

“Billy! Billy!” 

“William! Oh, William!” A moment later 


ELIZABETH COMES 


117 


Aunt Kate came around the corner of the tool- 
house. “ What on earth are you two doing 
here ? ” she exclaimed. 

“ Mary, did n’t you tell your uncle that Sena- 
tor Wright is here? ” 

Uncle Billy sprang to his feet, pretending to 
be astonished. 

‘‘ Mary! why did n’t you tell me that before? ” 
He seized her and swung her up over his shoulder, 
while she laughed so that she could not answer 
Aunt Kate. 

“ You are both too silly to live,” said Aunt 
Kate. “William Merwin! You’ve got on 
those dreadful old overalls again! Don’t for 
mercy sake, let Mr. Wright see you looking like 
that.” 

“What did I tell you, Mary?” Uncle Billy 
stood Mary on the ground again and took her 
hand and faced Aunt Kate. “ Now, we ’ll both 
be good children, mamma,” he promised, “ if you 
will go and shut the Senator up tight in the par- 
lor while I put on my best white dress and my 
white shoes and stockings! ” 

Mrs. Merwin could not help smiling, as she 
went to see that the coast was clear. 

Elizabeth was sitting primly on the sofa in the 
parlor when Mary came in with her uncle. She 
had waited in the sitting-room while he made him- 
sent presentable. He looked very nice in his 


118 


RED TOP RANCH 


blue flannels when he came into the room, and 
welcomed the newcomers. 

Senator Wright explained that he had come 
out to Wyoming to make a tour of the new cop- 
per country, and had decided to get off the train 
at Laramie and consult Mr. Merwin about the 
whole region, before going westward. 

“ I ’ll tell you a better scheme than that,” said 
Mr. Merwin. “ Just stay here a few days until 
I get my haying done, then I ’ll hitch up a camp- 
ing outfit and take you over the range myself. 
I ’ve been wanting to take a look over in the 
North Platte country for some time.” 

“Capital idea! I couldn’t ask for anything 
better,” replied Mr. Wright cordially. 

Mary slipped across the room, sat down on the 
sofa beside her uncle, and put her hand into his. 
He squeezed it as much as to say, “ I ’ll see,” 
which as children know is almost the same as say- 
ing, “ Yes, you may go.” 

“ Now, father! ” said Elizabeth from the piano 
stool where she was sitting. “ You know I can’t 
bear camping out.” 

“ You don’t know anything about it, Bess,” 
said her father. 

“ I know you sleep out of doors and wear old 
clothes and that is all I care to know,” said Eliza- 
beth. “ I want my trunk with my dresses.” 

“We ’ll telephone and get your trunk,” said 


ELIZABETH COMES 


119 


Mr. Merwin, ‘‘ and you can stay here and wear 
your pretty dresses all you please while your 
father and I go over the range.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Merwin. “ You can keep 
me company.” 

“ Thank you ; I should like that very much,” 
said Elizabeth. She glanced at Mary’s old ging- 
ham frock again. But Mary did not care. Her 
mind was full of the coming pleasure of going 
camping with her Uncle Billy. 

‘‘ Don’t you want to come out and see the 
ducks and chickens,” invited Mary, crossing the 
room to the newcomer. 

Elizabeth looked surprised. 

“ I don’t care much about such things,” she 
said. 

“ Well, then, come and see the wild broncho we 
caught two or three weeks ago,” said Mary. 
“ He ’s in the corral now. We keep him there.” 

Elizabeth looked more surprised, but she rose 
and the two went out together through the din- 
ing-room. Mary got some lumps of sugar from 
the pantry and carried them out on a pan to the 
corral. In one corner stood the buckskin. 
When they went up to the fence on that side he 
ran across to the other side. He looked no 
worse for his troubles now. Elizabeth was very 
much interested when Mary told her how he had 
been caught. 


IW 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ I feed him sugar every day to comfort him,” 
said Mary. 

They tried to coax the broncho, but he would 
not come near them. So they put the pan 
through the fence on the ground. When they 
were at a safe distance he came and nosed it and 
tirrned over the sugar and, — left it. Mary went 
into the stable and got a tin of oats and poured 
them on the pan with the sugar. When the buck- 
skin came back and found the oats he ate oats, 
sugar and all, then put up his head and looked 
inquiringly at the girls. 

Bud came by. “Well, Miss Mary, are you 
still making love to that outlaw? ” he asked. “ I 
reckon I ’ll have to get you a megaphone so you 
can whisper to that bronk from a safe distance.” 

Bud went on to his work and Mary took Eliza- 
beth over on the island to see Fireball and up to 
the log play-house. 

They were by the corral again just before sun- 
set while Mr. Wright was out too, looking about 
the place with Mr. Merwin, when Charlie came 
with several letters in his hand and gave them to 
his father. 

“ Excuse me,” said Mr. Merwin to the visitors. 
“ Here ’s one from the Elks at Cheyenne. Let ’s 
see what they want.” He read aloud the letter 
from the Secretary of the Elks saying that they 
were going to hold a fair in Cheyenne and re- 


ELIZABETH COMES 


121 


questing Mr. Merwin to contribute something 
for the charitable purposes of the Association. 
“ Look here, Bud,’’ he called to Bud Todd. 
“ What do you say to sending your buckskin 
broncho to the Elks for their fair? You roped 
him. He ’s yours.” 

Bud came over to the group with a smiling 
face. 

“ It would be a good joke on ’em to contribute 
that bronk as a saddle-horse,” he said. “ My 
limping Betsy! Every time I try to back him, he 
tries to break my neck.” 

“ Does the horse buck? ” inquired Senator 
Wright. 

“ Well, sir, I dunno as you could use such a 
polite word as buck for the way he humps himself 
and swaps ends,” replied Bud. ‘‘ I ’ve been try- 
ing to get onto that bubble of sulphur broth for a 
couple of weeks now, ever since we roped him. 
I ’m going to try him again, soon as I get through 
what I ’m at. The little girls there better get 
up on to the carriage-house out of harm’s way! ” 
He gave Mary a humorous glance, which she 
returned, with a solemn look. It was a point of 
difference between her and Bud, the way to treat 
that horse. 

“ I don’t want to get up on the carriage- 
house,” whispered Elizabeth. “ I might soil my 
dress.” 


122 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ He ’s only fooling. We ’ll go back to the 
porch before he starts to get the horse out. 

They were in the porch with the grown-ups 
when Bud tried to ride the broncho. Jim and 
Donnelly helped him get the animal out. They 
forced the bit into his mouth, although his mouth 
bled from the forcing, and they double cinched 
a big saddle on him. Then Bud tried for about 
the tenth time in a week to ride him. He worked 
for half an hour before he even got foot into a 
stirrup and his leg over the broncho ; then the ani- 
mal pitched viciously and suddenly rolled on the 
ground, the cowboy under him. 

Mary ran to him, utterly forgetful of herself, 
not even hearing her uncle’s call to stop as he fol- 
lowed her. She ran to the broncho on her way to 
Bud. The outlaw stopped short, and the little 
girl looked into his eyes. 

“ Poor horsie ! ” she said. “ Poor little buck- 
skin. You mustn’t hurt Bud!” She reached 
up and patted his nose. “ Go to the corral! Do 
you hear! Go to the corral! ” 

The broncho seemed to understand what Mary 
said. He lifted his head and trotted away to the 
corral. As Bud sat up Mary hurried to him 
with an anxious face. 

“ How do you feel? ” she asked. 

“ I ’m all right,” he said. “ Don’t you be 
worried about me. I ’d get up from the dead 


ELIZABETH COMES 


123 


to see you talk baby-talk to that bronk. You 
beat the Dutch, little ’un ! ” 

“ I do hope you ’re not hurt? ” she asked. 

“ He knocked me out for a minute, that ’s 
all,” Bud got to his feet as Mr. Merwin came 
up. 

“ Say, Boss,” he said. “ You write a letter to 
the Elks that we will present ’em a saddle-horse 
for their fair, one that ’s a regular pet for women 
’n’ children.” 

“ All right. Bud, it ’s a go. I ’ll telephone 
them now.” 

Bud limped away to the house, accompanied 
by his employer and Mary. They telephoned 
to the Elks’ secretary at Cheyenne that Mr. Wil- 
liam Merwin authorized Bud Todd to present a 
fine saddle-horse to the Elks’ Fair. 

“ Now Todd,” said Mr. Merwin, “ we ’ll have 
some fun and find out what they do with your 
charitable offering when we go down to Chey- 
enne on Frontier Day.” He turned to Mary 
as Bud went out of the room. ‘‘ Look here, 
young lady, you keep away from that buckskin. 
Do you hear me? ” 

“ Yes, uncle, but he did mind me though, 
did n’t he? ” exulted the little girl. 

When she went up-stairs to Elizabeth’s room 
with her that night, the visitor said as she took off 
her guimpe: 


124 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Papa says he wishes I liked horses as well as 
you do/’ 

“ Well, anyhow, I am not afraid of a horse,” 
said Mary. 


CHAPTER X 


AUNT Kate’s berry party 

‘‘ I WONDER who would like to go berrying 
with me this afternoon?” Aunt Kate asked at 
the end of noon dinner next day. 

Charlie and Bert held up both hands. 

“ Count me in ! ” said Bert. 

“ I ’ll show you where there are lots and lots 
of berries,” volunteered Charlie. 

“ You ’re coming to my party, Freddy, too? ” 
invited Mrs. Merwin. “ You always pick ber- 
ries so fast.” 

“ Thank you, mother,” replied her eldest son, 
“ but I ’ll let father have my chance, and I ’ll 
look after the haying.” 

“ All right, my son,” said Mr. Merwin. 
“ How about you? ” He turned to Mr. Wright. 

“ Nothing I should like better! ” said the cor- 
dial visitor. “ And I know Bessy will like it.” 

“ Are you going? ” Elizabeth asked Mary. 

Mary’s face was thoughtful. She remembered 
the dreadful time when last she looked for straw- 
berries, and was frightened by the rattlesnakes. 

125 


126 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mrs. Merwin understood, — 

“ Uncle Billy will go with us, Mary,” she said. 

Mary gave her a grateful glance. 

“Yes, Elizabeth, of course I’m going,” she 
said. “ You and I will see which one can get 
the most berries. Let ’s go and get ready. 

“ I ’ll go as I am,” said Elizabeth. 

Mary made no comment, but she knew that 
Elizabeth’s white dress and shoes might come to 
grief ; she hurried away to put on her own oldest 
dress. 

Seven people and three dogs started up river 
about two o’clock, every one armed with basket 
or pail, varying in size from Bert’s tin lard-pail 
to the market-basket that Mrs. Merwin hung on 
Senator Wright’s arm. They crossed to the 
island, passed the Old Channel, went along the 
bank of the mountain for half a mile, then down 
to a wild grassy place near the stream, where 
Charlie was sure that they would find berries. 

“ Last year I got a bushel of ’em here a week 
earlier than this,” he said to his mother, with a 
disappointed face, when they had looked for 
awhile in vain. 

“ Never mind, dearie,” she replied, then to her 
husband: “ Billy, why can’t we go across the river 
and up to that meadow yonder? ” 

“ We can, all right. I ’ve got on my rubber 
boots purposely for wading. I can lend ’em to 


AUNT RATERS BERRY PARTY 127 

the Senator to get across in.” He led the way 
to a shallow place where the rushing water was 
not over the tops of his rubber boots, stepped out 
into the water and backed up to Mary, saying: 

“ Will you ride the donkey first, please, miss? ” 

“ Let Auntie go first,” laughed Mary, watch- 
ing her aunt who at once crept out on that strong 
back and clasped her arms tightly around those 
broad shoulders. Bending forward to resist the 
rush of the stream around his legs, and with his 
burden on his back, Mr. Merwin forded the 
stream and landed his wife on the other side. 

He came over for Mary and again for Eliza- 
beth. Then he sent Bert paddling back bare- 
footed with his rubber boots for Mr. Wright. 

“ Why can’t I wade without my shoes like 
Charlie and you and the dogs,” Mr. Wright 
asked Bert. 

“ Feel of the water,” Bert made answer. 

Mr. Wright stooped and put his hand into the 
stream. 

“ Whew ! it is icy, is n’t it ! ” he exclaimed. 

“ Comes right off the snow, but I like it.” Bert 
kicked one bare foot on the other to take out the 
stinging of the snow water. Mr. Wright put on 
the rubber boots and waded over carrying his 
shoes and stockings. 

A little way farther and Aunt Kate came first 
upon a dream of a place to pick wild strawberries. 


128 


RED TOP RANCH 


a mountain meadow, set round on three sides 
with clumps of trees. The river was on one side ; 
and an irrigating ditch led straight across the 
middle of grassy deeps where thousands of sweet 
tiny berries were ripening under the August sun. 

“ Everybody begin at once on this side,” she 
commanded. “ Let ’s pick right across the field.” 

They all began in good earnest, but who ever 
picked berries in regular order! The berries 
were all over the place, hiding here, peeping out 
yonder, red and tempting. 

“Not fair to eat them all up!” said Charlie, 
coming upon Mary alone near a clump of alders, 
her lips smeared with the red juice. 

“ I only tasted a few! ” she protested. “Are n’t 
they perfectly delicious?” For a long time 
Mary picked and picked, not stopping to speak 
to anyone until her basket was more than half 
full. She was surprised as she moved on to see 
how the berries shook down and how long it took 
to get enough of them to pass the half full mark 
in her basket. She kept near her aunt and uncle 
who worked side by side; they seemed to know 
just where to look for the nicest strawberries. 

Presently Uncle Billy stood up and stretched 
himself, Mr. Wright followed his example. 

“ Stiff work for old backs,” remarked Mr. 
Wright. 

“ There are no old backs here, though,” said 


AUNT KATE'S BERRY PARTY 


129 


Mrs. Merwin, merrily, looking up from under 
her white sunbonnet. Then she sprang to her 
feet exclaiming: 

“ For mercy’s sake, Billy, how dark it is! ” 
Thunder rumbled as she spoke. 

“ I ’ve been looking at that black cloud for 
several minutes, hoping it would go round,” he 
said, “ but it means business. We ’ve got to 
make tracks for shelter.” 

“ Boys! ” she called. “ Come on, all hands! ” 
A few big drops of rain pattered upon them 
as they hurried homeward. The air was suddenly 
breathless, then the wind began to freshen. By 
the time they came to Oggerson’s haystacks the 
thunder was crashing, and jagged lightning in 
broad bands flamed up and down the sky. Rain 
came with a rushing wind, and they hurriedly 
crawled into the stack just as the hail began. 
Huge hailstones, half as big as her fist, were 
pelting Mary’s ankles as she crawled out of the 
storm into the warm, dry nest her uncle scooped 
out in the heart of the hay. Bert and Charlie 
burrowed in on one side; Mr. Wright and Eliza- 
beth in another hay cavern close by. 

“ Don’t eat your berries, boys ! ” shouted Mrs. 
Merwin, sitting up and taking off her sunbonnet, 
adding in a lower voice : “ It would be just like 
those boys to eat all they picked. I want to 
make strawberry shortcake for supper.” 


130 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary gazed at her aunt wondering to see her 
sit there talking about supper, when it looked as 
if they might have to stay in the haystack all 
night. The wind roared with fury. The hail- 
stones covered the ground as if there had been a 
snow-storm. 

“ I hope Fred has got the horses sheltered from 
this wind,” said Mr. Merwin. 

“ Trust Bud to look after Fred,” replied his 
wife. “ What I am worrying about is my rose- 
bush at the south of the house. It is so hard to 
get garden roses to grow at this altitude ! ” 

“Too bad, my dear! How are you getting 
on, puss? ” Her uncle asked Mary. 

“ I ’m all right,” said Mary, snuggling up to 
his side. 

The wind beat on their place of safety, the 
hailstones pelted down. F or nearly an hour they 
stayed there out of the reach of wind and 
weather. 

Then the storm ceased, the dogs came drenched 
from the place they had found for themselves un- 
der the lee of the stack. The people crawled 
out, all except Elizabeth. 

“My little girl went to sleep,” said Mr. 
Wright. 

“ Bertie, you and Charlie wait here with Mary 
till Elizabeth wakes up,” said Mrs. Merwin, who 
was busy pouring everybody’s berries into one 


AUNT RATERS BERRY PARTY 131 

large pail. “ Mr. Wright, will you come home 
with me and help me carry these berries? ” 

“ With pleasure,” said the Senator. 

“ I ’ll send Malley back on horseback to lead 
Fireball for the girls to ride home so that they 
need n’t get their feet wet wading through this 
hail.” 

“ And what shall this little boy do, mother? ” 
asked Mr. Merwin. 

“ Whatever you please,” she answered. 

“ Well, I ’ll go and make it right with Ogger- 
son for breaking into his berry field as well as 
his new hay-stack.” 

“ His berry field ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Merwin. 

“ It really is time that you knew where our 
land leaves off and Oggerson’s begins, Kate. 
But as this was your berry party and I was 
only invited, I had to go where you took me 
and — ” 

“Hush! Stop your teasing,” she laughed. 
“ Do go and make it right with him. Come, Mr. 
Wright! ” and she was off towards home. 

It was chilly standing about on the icy ground, 
so after their elders had gone Bert and Charlie 
began to work at building a snow-man, and Mary 
helped, picking up hailstones. They had a fine- 
looking man built before Elizabeth crawled 
yawning out of the stack. Her white dress was 
crumpled and soiled, her white shoes muddy. 


1S2 


RED TOP RANCH 


Bert was just putting his straw hat on the snow- 
man’s head. 

“ Well, Little Boy Blue under the haystack 
fast asleep? ” he said. 

Elizabeth paid no attention to him. “ Where ’s 
father?” she asked Mary. 

“ He went back to the house with Aunt Kate,” 
answered Mary. 

Elizabeth sighed. 

“ I don’t think I care much for this rough sort 
of life,” she murmured. 

Mary could hardly keep her face straight. 

“ This snow-man likes it,” she said. “ Let me 
introduce Mr. Hailstones, Miss Wright.” 

Bert took his hat off the snow-man’s head and 
said, for him: 

‘‘ Happy to meet you. Miss Wright.” 

Elizabeth looked cross. 

“ I don’t think much of this climate,” she said. 
“ The idea of a snow-man in August ! ” 

“ Sorry you don’t admire me. Miss Wright,” 
giggled Bert. Charlie nudged him, he toppled 
against the snow-man, grasped Charlie, and in 
the tussle all three went down together. Bert 
got to his feet first. 

“ I don’t care for this rough life,” he said. 

‘"Hush!” said Mary. But Elizabeth was 
walking away indignantly in the direction of the 
Oggerson house. 


AUNT RATERS BERRY PARTY 


133 


‘‘ Nobody likes to be mocked, boys,” said Mary. 
She ran to overtake the visitor, and with Eliza- 
beth waded through the sleet to the Oggersons’ 
log house. When they got there they were shiv- 
ering, Mrs. Oggerson said her husband was out 
of doors with Mr. Merwin. The kind old woman 
asked the little girls to come into her kitchen, 
where a good fire was burning, and made them 
dry their feet and drink hot milk. They waited 
there for nearly an hour, in comfort, while Mrs. 
Oggerson sat knitting and telling them stories of 
the hardships of her early days in Wyoming, 
when the Indians were troublesome and the first 
railroad was being built. Mary was saying how 
much she wished she could see an Indian when 
Uncle Billy came for them and they went out 
into the yard. 

Mary could scarcely believe her eyes. Not a 
sign of the hail-storm remained. The sun was 
shining hot in the blue sky. The ground was dry 
where the snowy sheets had been and the grass- 
hoppers were darting about in the yellow grass. 

Malley was waiting for them on Tom, leading 
Fireball, but Elizabeth was afraid to get on 
her back and walked home with Mr. Merwin, 
while Mary cantered away beside the new hired 
man. 

When they all sat down to supper at night, 
they found the berries they had picked that after- 


RED TOP RANCH 


134j 

noon served in little short-cakes, each one about 
the size of a breakfast roll. There were three 
apiece for everybody. 

“ This is the best short-cake I have tasted since 
I was a boy at home in Ohio,” said Senator 
Wright. 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Merwin. But 
in Ohio your wild strawberries did n’t come 
through snow and ice, did they? ” 

“ Indeed they did not,” said Mr. Wright 
heartily. 

“ Bill Nye, the humorist, once lived in Lara- 
mie,” said Mr. Merwin, passing the cream. 
“ He used to say that Wyoming has two seasons, 
July and Winter.” 


CHAPTER XI 


OYER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 

When the haying was done. Bud Todd and 
Jim went to Cheyenne, leading the little buck- 
skin to the Elks for their fair. Mary said good- 
bye to the broncho with some sadness, but her 
mind was on the camping outfit which her uncle 
was making ready to take Senator Wright over 
the range. To her great delight Mary was per- 
mitted to go with them. Elizabeth remained at 
the ranch with Mrs. Merwin. They started on a 
pleasant August afternoon about four o’clock, 
intending to drive only fifteen miles the first day 
and sleep in quarters Mr. Merwin engaged by 
telephone at a ranch-house near the foot of the 
range. Mr. Merwin had covered the spring 
wagon with a tent cover like those used by emi- 
grants for their heavier wagons. They were 
protected by this from the fierce heat of the mid- 
day sun, as well as from sudden showers. 

On the wide spring seat up in front sat Mary, 
between her uncle and Mr. Wright. Her face 
looked very bright when she waved good-bye to 
135 


136 


RED TOP RANCH 


her aunt that afternoon as her uncle gathered up 
the reins, and Dick and Dolly, the bays, trotted 
off towards the big gate. 

In the back of the wagon was stowed a tent, 
three army blankets, and a roll of tarpaulin, a few 
dishes in a basket, their cooking utensils, and pro- 
visions for man and beast, enough to last a week. 
There were two satchels and a valise containing 
extra clothing for the three travellers. 

Mary was dressed in one of her red serge rid- 
ing-habits, skirt, jacket, and bloomers, with a red 
tarn on her head. 

“ Well, puss, your cheeks are almost as bright 
as your clothes,” said Uncle Billy when they had 
passed through the gate, and were fairly off 
across the plain towards Sheep Mountain. She 
looked up at him with happy eyes. 

“ You don’t seem to be a bit pleased starting 
off on your travels with me again,” he added. 
“ I don’t believe you like to go ! ” 

Mary made no reply. Her heart was too full 
to say anything, but her eyes said all that heart 
could wish. 

There had been a time yesterday when it looked 
very much as if she would be left behind. Eliza- 
beth did not wish to go on the expedition herself, 
but she did not care to have her father so willing 
to leave her behind, and she coaxed Mary to stay 
at the ranch with her until she was on the point 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 137 


of staying at home. But Aunt Kate intervened 
and nothing more was said about her giving up 
the excursion she had been dreaming of for days. 

She sang as they drove along to a gay rollick- 
ing tune learned in a Mother Goose quadrille: 

The King of France and twenty thousand men 

Marched up the hill and then marched down again ! ” 

Mr. Wright joined in, his bass voice chiming 
with Mary’s sweet soprano, making music be- 
cause they could not help it, for pleasure in the 
day and the journey. 

They drove on and round the bend of Sheep 
Mountain on and on and came at sunset to the 
ranch on Little River where they were to spend 
the night. As their covered wagon drew up at 
the side of the house, they heard the sound of a 
gun and a voice hallooed: 

‘‘Hold on there! Wait a minute.” 

Mary leaned forward and saw two men with 
guns shooting at young roosters that were mak- 
ing off from the barn-yard as fast as they could 
go. Two of the roosters fell. One of the men 
went after them and the other came to the side of 
the wagon. 

“ Howdy,” he said. “ I did n’t want to shoot 
you up. Light now! ” 

Mr. Wright’s face wore such a look of aston- 


138 


RED TOP RANCH 


ishment that the host and Mr. Merwin burst out 
laughing. 

“ Pretty tame sport, I own, shooting barn- 
yard fowls,” confessed the master of Little River 
Ranch. “ But my wife set her heart on giving 
you fried chicken for supper as soon as we got 
your telephone message. She sent me off on the 
mountain for raspberries, so I did n’t get time to 
get the chickens for her before. The wild 
west ain’t what it used to be,” he added, shaking 
hands with Senator Wright. “ Wildest I can 
do for you is wild raspberries.” He laughed 
again. 

“ It does seem civilized to find the telephone 
everywhere,” said Mr. Wright. ‘‘ But there ’s 
a good deal of open country left yet.” 

“ Land, yes! Plenty of men up in the hills too 
that never spoke through a telephone, men that 
eat fried bear for fresh meat to get a change from 
salt pork. Well, walk into the house, gentle- 
men. Come, sissy.” 

Mary slept that night on a couch in the parlor 
of the ranch-house. She put her comb and brush 
on the cottage organ and looked into a picture of 
Longfellow’s children for a mirror. 

Next morning they had an early breakfast and 
were off soon after sunrise. They travelled all 
day, with only an hour’s rest at noon, towards the 
peaks that looked so near, and camped at night 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 139 


beside a creek that seemed as far from the moun- 
tains as when they started in the morning. 

Mary will never forget, even when she is an 
old lady, that first night in camp. It was sunset 
when they stopped. Uncle Billy unhitched the 
horses. After watering them at the creek, he 
tied them each to one of the wagon wheels, and 
gave them their feed on the ground. Then he 
built a fire of dry cottonwood twigs and boughs 
that Mr. Wright helped him gather; he cut two 
large saplings and forked them together over his 
fire. In these forked sticks he hung their camp 
kettle. Mary had been watching him with in- 
terest until he got the kettle, then she exclaimed : 

“ Dear me. Uncle Billy! I must n’t let you do 
all the housework 1 ” 

She climbed into the wagon and explored 
among the provisions. Emerging with a bag of 
salt and a package of puffed rice, she climbed 
down over the wheel feeling very useful. Uncle 
Billy smiled. 

“ I guess we ’ll save that rice for your break- 
fast.” He took the things from her and climbed 
back into the wagon. Then he handed out a 
frying-pan, a large piece of bacon with a knife to 
slice it, a loaf of bread, a package of coffee, and 
a coffee-pot. 

“ Those are the first necessaries of a camp sup- 
per, Mary,” he said. “ Now, we ’ll see what little 


140 


RED TOP RANCH 


tidbits we can find for you. Hi! ” he suddenly 
shouted with laughter, and produced a basket 
with a table-cloth and napkins. “ Your aunt got 
tony because you folks are along! ” He passed 
out the basket. “ Well, we ’ll use them for fun.” 
He handed them out to Mary. She spread the 
cloth on the grass and put the napkins about, 
while her uncle came with a can of cookies labelled 
in her aunt’s handwriting, “ For Mary.” 

Uncle Billy soon had supper ready. Mary 
had never liked bacon, but now she sat happily 
on the ground eating hot bacon sandwiches as 
her uncle speared slices of bacon from the frying- 
pan to the slices of bread. 

When they had eaten supper, Mr. Merwin 
pitched the little tent, took some tent-cloth, 
spread it inside on the ground, and threw into the 
tent two of the army blankets for himself and 
Senator Wright. 

“There, that’s luxury!” he said. “Many’s 
the time I ’ve rolled myself in my blanket and 
slept under the stars with no tarpaulin under me.” 

The air was very dry and the sky full of stars 
made a soft, brilliant light. 

When Uncle Billy had taken out the spring 
seat and put its cushions down in the bottom of 
the wagon with two warm blankets, Mary’s bed 
was ready. But she sat up for an hour by the 
fire beside her uncle while he told stories and the 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 141 


coyotes howled afar off. Mary woke about two 
o’clock that night and sat up in her blanket roll 
looking at the stars, feeling warm and cosy, and 
happy with the wonder and beauty of it all. 

The next day they travelled westward over 
the great plateau, and camped again at night be- 
side a stream. Mary was awakened from her 
first sound sleep in the wagon on that second 
night by the most terrible sound she had ever 
heard in her life. It was like the scream of some 
one in deathly distress. Yet it was unearthly, 
inhuman, and Mary felt almost stifled with hor- 
ror, as she sat up, suddenly wide awake. The 
horses were munching contentedly close by. Over 
in the little tent, was her uncle, asleep. Again 
came that wild sound, and from the opposite di- 
rection! It was answering the first call which 
an instant later was repeated, more dreadful than 
before. 

“Indians!” said Mary to herself, and she 
grew cold with fear. She had read of such 
things, but she never knew before how one’s scalp 
can prickle and each hair seem to stand up by 
itself on one’s head, and all one’s body seem 
turning to ice. But in spite of her fear she re- 
solved to warn her sleeping uncle. She was sure 
that the Indians were surrounding them. That 
must be their war cry! Uncle Billy should not 
be murdered in his sleep. 


142 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary climbed out over the wagon wheel, in 
spite of her terror. Barefooted and in her outing- 
flannel wrapper, she ran over the cold gound and 
rushed into the little tent, even as that awful 
moaning yell sounded again through the silent 
night. 

“Hi! Who’s there?” She heard the click 
of a pistol as Mr. Wright sat up. In the same in- 
stant she heard her uncle’s voice exclaiming: 

“ Why, darling, what ’s the matter? ” He 
knew by the plainsman’s instinct that no enemy 
was near. 

“Indians, Indians!” gasped Mary between 
her chattering teeth. “ They are sounding the 
war whoop! I was afraid they would kill you. 
Oh, listen.” Again came that awful scream. 

“ A screech-owl! ” Uncle Billy laughed aloud. 
“ You poor child! That ’s not Indians. That ’s 
only a pair of screech-owls.” He got up and 
wrapped a blanket around the shivering child, 
and carried her back to her wagon bed. 

“ I ought to have told you about them. I 
don’t wonder they scared you, dearest,” he said, 
as he tucked her warmly into her blanket roll. 
“ I ’ll stay here with you till you go to sleep.” 
He wrapped himself in the blanket from the 
tent. “ Shall I tell you a story? ” he asked. 

“ Not about adventures, thank you,” whispered 
Mary, speaking for the first time. She was try- 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 143 

ing hard not to cry in the reaction after her 
alarm. 

“ No, no, pussy, I ’ll tell you what I will do. 
I ’ll sing ‘ Hush My Hear ’ to you. How would 
you like that? ” 

Mary laughed nervously. “ Yes, do sing 
‘ Hush My Dear ’ to me ! I suppose I was a baby 
to get so frightened, but that screech did sound 
terrible. Uncle Billy.” 

“ Of course it did; I have been scared stiff by 
them myself.” 

“ You won’t tell Bert and Charlie on me? ” 

“ Not much. Mum ’s the word. Now cuddle 
down. He began to sing in a rich, low voice, 
repeating the song when he had finished, and re- 
peating it again. Soon the stars blinked out of 
sight in the sky and Mary was asleep, hearing 
the echo of his voice crooning: 

Heavenly blessings without number 
Gently falling on thy head.” 

On the third night they came to Conness 
Mountain Ranch, where they all rested for a day 
before they went up on the mountain to look at the 
shaft leading into the first of the ore lands that 
Mr. Wright had come to Wyoming to see. Mary 
did not go up on the mountain with the men. She 
rested at the ranch-house and the next day they 
all went to a small hotel in the mountain town. 


144 


RED TOP RANCH 


Here Mary played in the hotel parlor with the 
landlady’s little girl while her uncle and Mr. 
Wright went back to the copper mine up on the 
mountain. When they started in the wagon next 
morning they talked all the time about copper 
and mining, ores and shafts and smelters, and 
Mary made up her mind to go with them to the 
next mine. They made a long climb that day 
through the hills of the Medicine Bow by a nar- 
row wagon road that wound upward along the 
sides of pine-clad mountains, across open spaces, 
past wild fantastic boulders that looked like 
giants and canons and corners of churches 
tumbled about at the creation of the world. 

The only animals that they saw were chip- 
munks, tiny animals, which were smaller and 
smaller as the altitude grew higher, until they 
were not much bigger than mice. 

They stopped to water their horses at a golden 
clear creek flowing across one of the wide mead- 
ow openings that mountain people call a park. 
They all got out of the wagon, for Mary wanted 
some flowers that grew on the bank. 

“ You have crossed the Continental Divide, 
Mary,” said her Uncle Billy. “ This water flows 
to the Gulf of California, instead of to the Gulf 
of Mexico.” 

Mary stooped and dipped some of the water 
and drank it. She looked up with a funny, 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 145 


whimsical expression on her face, dipped and 
tasted again. 

“ Well, it is all United States water,” she said. 
“ I can’t see that it ’s any different from the wa- 
ter at home or at the ranch.” 

Uncle Billy patted her on the shoulder. 

“ Your travels have broadened your mind,” he 
said. “ You are soon going to see a town, 
though, that looks different from any town that 
you ever saw before.” 

“ I never saw anything like this before my- 
self,” said Mr. Wright as they drove into the 
mining-camp, just before noon. 

It was a collection of new log cabins scattered 
about irregularly in a grove of tall pine-trees 
that made a solemn singing sound in the moun- 
tain breeze. Many of the trees had been cut 
down, leaving stumps higher than Mary’s head, 
for the woodsmen’s axes had done their work in 
winter when the snow lay several feet deep on the 
ground. As they drove along the road of the 
town, they heard a sound of singing. It came 
from a log schoolhouse, and as they passed they 
saw through the open door a young lady and a 
dozen children. 

‘‘ They are singing before school closes for the 
noon recess,” said Mary. “ But why do they 
have school in summer? ” 

“ Too deep snow for little kids to wade through 


146 


RED TOP RANCH 


in winter up at this altitude,” replied Uncle 
Billy. 

They left their team at a log stable and went 
on foot across a brook and up a climb of the road 
to the miners’ boarding-house where they were to 
have their dinner. As she sat down on a rocking- 
chair in the porch, after climbing up the steep 
steps of the house, Mary felt very queer. Her 
temples throbbed, her side ached. As she looked 
at her uncle, everything grew misty before her. 
She tried to speak; her voice would not come, just 
as in a dream. She heard her uncle saying : 

“Never mind, chick! Here, take a drink of 
water. It is the altitude. We ’re nearly eleven 
thousand feet up here.” 

Mary had heard a good deal about altitude in 
Wyoming, but she had no idea it could affect 
any one like this. The Swedish woman who 
worked in the boarding-house came out to say 
that dinner was ready, and when she saw Mary 
she exclaimed: 

“ Sometimes dey gets like dat, sometimes dey 
nose bleeds, sometimes dey gets fits to the aldi- 
dood. When I first came to dis coundry my 
heart aches like to bust hisself night and day.” 

Mary smiled and felt better. “ I ’m hungry,” 
she whispered. 

“ Dat ’s aldidood, also,” said the woman. So 
they went in for dinner. The three sat at one 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 147 


end of a long table in a large room made of un- 
finished lumber. At the head of the table was 
the manager of the mine, whom Uncle Billy 
knew. About the table were ranged twenty 
men eating beef, potatoes, and pie. They came 
and went in groups of three or four until all of 
the men who were above ground at this shift had 
eaten their dinner. 

The manager came and spoke to Mary as 
she sat in the porch afterwards, waiting for her 
uncle 

“ Would you like to come to the mine with me 
now? ” he asked. “ Your uncle is down yonder 
smoking with the stranger and he said he ’d find 
you over by the engine if you would like to 
take a look around with me. I Ve got a little 
girl of my own about your size back east in 
Nebraska.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mary rising. “ I ’d like 
to come very much.” 

They went down the steps and along the road 
a short distance to sheds which covered the shaft. 
There was an engine there which worked up and 
down the buckets that came from time to time to 
the mouth of the shaft, which was like a wide 
deep well down into the mountain. The mana- 
ger introduced Mary to the engineer, who ex- 
plained to her how his engine did its work. He 
told her that he spent much of the time beside the 


148 


RED TOP RANCH 


engine himself, not liking to trust it too long to 
his present assistant, who was a boy. 

“ I had a good engineer to help me, but he has 
gone off out west,” he said. 

Mary looked at him and then about her curi- 
ously. Here were great piles of strangely col- 
ored ores, there were the tall stumps; below 
ground men were digging in the heart of the 
mountain for copper. In her nostrils was the 
keen sweet air of the high mountains. 

‘‘ Is n’t this out west? ” she timidly asked the 
engineer. He smiled in an understanding 
way. 

“ I suppose it does seem west to you, coming 
from way back east as you do, but my assistant 
rode three days and nights west yet on the cars 
to get to Seattle.” 

The manager came up to Mary with a lump of 
odd-colored ore in his hand. 

“ Here ’s some fine copper,” he said. “ You 
can take it along home with you and show them 
what we are smelting out our way, to make into 
telephone wires for you, and all sorts of things.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mary. 

'Just as her uncle and Mr. Wright came the 
huge bucket from the mine shot up into view, and 
a man stepped out. The engineer had signalled 
for him to come up and get the visitors. 

“ Well, puss, are you going down into the mine 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 149 

with us ? ” asked her uncle, nodding towards the 
shaft. 

“Me!” said Mary flushing. 

“ You need n’t if you don’t want to.” 

“ Of course I want to, if you go,” she an- 
swered, bravely enough, but not feeling half as 
brave as she looked. 

They went with the manager and he lent Mr. 
Merwin and Mr. Wright oilskin suits to put on. 
He gave Mary an oilskin cap for her head, and a 
boy’s rubber coat that quite covered her. She 
hung her red tarn and jacket across a barrel, and 
with her hand clasped in her uncle’s stepped out 
to the edge of the shaft and looked down. It 
was very dark down there. Mary got into the 
bucket with the rest, but when the thing began to 
move she grasped her uncle’s arm with both her 
arms and hung fast while the engineer let them 
slowly down into the ground. 

They had scarcely got out of sight of the light 
at the mouth of the shaft before their guide said 
“ Here we are at the first level.” It was a damp 
tunnel where a number of men were mining by 
lights arranged at regular intervals. Mary 
heard a great deal of explanation about levels 
and depths and ore bodies which interested Mr. 
Wright and Mr. Merwin, but she clung fast to 
her uncle’s arm and kept saying over and over 
to herself, to keep from being afraid: 


150 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Intra mintra, cutra corn, 

Apple seed and apple thorn, 

Wier brier, limber lock. 

Six geese in a flock.” 

She was saying it over for about the twentieth 
time when they shot up into daylight again. 
lUncle Billy, looking down at the silent little 
figure beside him, saw that her face was pale, 
and her lips were moving. He said nothing, but 
took her at once to the cabin where they were to 
stay. There he told her to lie down on the cot 
where she was to sleep that night, and gave her 
a glass of hot lemonade. Mary soon fell asleep 
and had one of those long afternoon naps which 
make the evening so pleasant. 

The manager came after supper and took 
them all for a short walk in the moonlight up 
through the beautiful shadowy pines to an out- 
look in a high place. The pine-trees made soft 
music overhead. When they came to the out- 
look they saw the high wonderful world in the 
brilliant moonlight. Not far away the snowy 
white peaks of the range were shining against the 
violet sky. 

‘‘ I made a mistake coming this way,” said Mr. 
Merwin the next afternoon when they were half 
a day’s journey on the road towards home. He 
had been grave for several minutes. Now he was 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 151 


standing in the wagon looking backward over 
the canvas top. 

“ What ’s the trouble? ” asked Mr. Wright. 

Mary gazed with anxious eyes at her uncle’s 
serious face. 

“Don’t be afraid — . Whewl” Mr. Merwin 
tightened the reins; the horses moved forward, 
sniffing nervously. “ The woods must be on fire 
again above Lower Gulch ! ” 

“ Oh, I smell smoke! ” cried Mary. 

Mr. Merwin handed the reins to Mr. Wright, 
got out of the wagon, went back a short distance 
and reconnoitred from an outlook. 

“ Those woods are on fire off there at the right,” 
he said when he came back. “ The wind is bear- 
ing the fire down to the neck of woods yonder 
that we have to go through. If we can get 
across the Gulch there we shall be all right.” He 
sat down taking the reins again. 

“ Had n’t we better go back the way we 
came? ” asked Mr. Wright. 

“We can’t now. The fire will be burning 
across that upper road, ten miles back, long be- 
fore we could strike across. Up hill, too! Get 
up ! ” He called to the bays and they made off 
at a good pace down the long hill road toward the 
point of safe crossing through the great wall of 
purple smoke-cloud that began to darken the 
sun. 


152 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary looked at her uncle in silence. Her lips 
were set firmly. She was thinking. “ Uncle 
Billy must be dreadfully anxious to look like 
that.’’ 

A line settled on either side of his mouth; he 
frowned as he urged his horses forward. The 
great distant smoke-cloud with which they were 
racing grew denser and more dark. As they 
came to a level place on the road, Mr. Merwin 
whipped his horses to a run and the spring- 
wagon went bumping along at a tremendous 
rate. 

The smell of smoke grew stronger and 
stronger. They came out into an opening of 
the woodland road and looked off to the place 
they were racing to reach. It was still un- 
touched, but the big smoke-cloud was drawing 
very near. 

“ Uncle Billy, could n’t we go faster if we were 
on the horses ? ” asked Mary. He did not seem 
to hear her. She put her fingers against his 
neck. “ Uncle Billy! ” she insisted. 

“ Yes, dear? ” he answered. 

He glanced at her then. His face was 
gray and Mary knew that it was anxiety for 
her. 

“ I said, let ’s get on the horses. Can’t we go 
faster that way? Or don’t you want to leave the 
wagon? ” 


OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE 153 


“ The wagon be hanged! ” said Mr. Merwin. 
“ It ’s of no account.” 

“ Look! ” cried Mary. 

Reddish yellow flames were mingling with the 
purple smoke-wall now. The forest was on fire. 
Not five miles away, great tongues of fire were 
lapping upwards from the tops of tall old dead- 
wood trees, and scorching the green wood of the 
jack-pines. 

Mary climbed over the wheel to the ground the 
moment that her uncle stopped the horses. 
While he unhitched them, she got up on Dick’s 
back. By the time that Mr. Wright was on the 
other horse, her uncle was on Dick behind her; 
then they all galloped off towards the neck of 
woods where they must cross the stream to reach 
the place of safety. 

On they ran, on and on! But the fire was 
there before them. As they entered the neck of 
woods, the flames were creeping in among the 
dead underbrush. For a mile at their right the 
unchecked fire was marching through the forest. 
They could feel its breadth on their faces as the 
snorting, terrified horses picked their way over 
fallen trees, then down the crumbling bank and 
across the little stream. 

Once across Mr. Merwin had felt sure of their 
safety; but as Dick came up the first rise of 
ground beyond the water they saw that a lesser 


154 


RED TOP RANCH 


fire was marching down from the hills on the 
other side. In ten minutes at most the two fires 
must meet. It was death for man or beast caught 
in that double flame. 








* 


i 


/ 


Through the burning forest 



CHAPTER XII 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 

Mr. Merwin tore off his coat and wrapped it 
round Mary’s head to keep her from breathing 
flame. 

‘‘ You ’ll get burned your own self, Uncle 
Billy! ” protested Mary as he wrapped her. 

There followed a dark smothered time as good 
old Dick put back his ears and ran straight be- 
tween the two marching fires while the other 
horse pounded faithfully after. It seemed to 
Mary that she should choke before Uncle Billy 
swung her free and she could sit up and breathe 
deep again. Uncle Billy turned their horse 
around; they sat for a few moments looking at 
the meeting of the two great pillars of cloud, shot 
through with consuming flame. Then Mary 
cried aloud. 

“Oh, Uncle Billy, look! Your poor, dear 
arms! ” 

Patches of his shirt sleeves were scorched away ; 
the flesh below was burned. Uncle Billy looked 
instead at her loving, anguished little face. 

155 


156 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Never you mind, Mary. Don’t you worry. 
Cotton cloth is cheap! Aunt Kate won’t scold 
us for getting my shirt burned as long as your 
new red jacket is all right.” 

Mary put up her hand and patted his cheek. 
Then she tore her handkerchief in two and tied 
up one of his arms; she took his own handker- 
chief out of his pocket and tied up the other to 
keep the air from the smarting burns. 

“ It is a wonder you did n’t breathe flame,” he 
said to Mr. Wright. 

“ Me? Oh, I hid my face in my hat like you 
and got through all right.” 

“ This is nothing,” said Mr. Merwin. “ I 
fought Are once that gave me that! ” He turned 
back his collar and showed a scar on his neck. 
“ The Are really got hold of me then and chewed. 
Well, let ’s see if we can make Lower Gulch 
Ranch by supper-time and find an outfit to get 
us home to-morrow.” 

Five miles down stream they came to a ranch- 
house where they could telephone to Red Top 
and there they spent the night. Next day the 
master of Lower Gulch took them all home in his 
spring wagon, their own horses following on be- 
hind, the harnesses in the wagon. 

“ Well, Mary, how does it seem to be living in 
the house again? ” asked Aunt Kate, putting 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 


157 


down her book one cool August evening two 
nights later as they all sat around the sitting- 
room lamp. Mr. Wright and Elizabeth had 
gone; everybody was reading. 

“ It seems lovely, just lovely,” said Mary, 
looking up with a smile. ‘‘ When I woke this 
morning and saw the pink rose-buds on my wall- 
paper, I did n’t know at first where I was. I 
thought they looked too big for stars.” 

“ The most fun of camping out is getting home 
and talking about how much fun it was,” said 
Uncle Billy contentedly from his arm-chair. 

‘‘ Well, I don’t know about that, father,” said 
Fred. “ When you and I rode through Yellow- 
stone Park last summer, you said almost every 
night when we made camp that it beat staying at 
home all hollow.” 

“ Oh, well, I said that last summer. That was 
before I lost my spring wagon.” Mr. Merwin 
reached for one of the new August magazines. 
“ Maybe I ’ll say the same thing next summer 
again. Can’t I change my mind now and then 
as well as your mother? ” 

“ Your father is a philosopher, Fred,” re- 
marked Mary with an air. 

“What is your definition of a philosopher. 
Miss Lloyd?” inquired Fred, with solemnity. 

“ Yes, tell us, chick,” said her uncle. 

“ Well,” Mary paused to think. “ A philo- 


158 


RED TOP RANCH 


sopher is a gentleman — or lady — who takes things 
as they come, and does n’t make a fuss.” 

“ Good! ” said Uncle Billy. 

“ You are something of a philosopher yourself, 
Mary. That ’s why you are so popular in this 
family,” said Fred. 

Mary got up and made him a courtesy. 

“ Thank you, sir,” she said. 

‘‘What are you reading?” asked her aunt, 
holding out her hand for the book. Mary came 
and showed her. It was Fenimore Cooper’s 
“ Leatherstocking.” 

“ I thought so,” said Aunt Kate, with a smile, 
and laughed. 

“ It ’s a daisy book,” said Mary. “ Now don’t 
tell me to go to bed. Your face has just the look 
it always has when you are going to say ‘ Bed- 
time!’” 

“ Please let us finish our chapters ! Please, 
mamma! We’re good children to-night,” 
pleaded Uncle Billy. 

“All right,” said Aunt Kate. She kept her 
arm around Mary and read with her until it was 
time to go to bed. 

“ I always loved that book myself,” she said. 
“ But I never knew any Indians like those.” 

“ Do you know any Indians, Auntie? ” asked 
Mary. 

“ I have known a good many Indians first and 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 


159 


last, the Utes up here in the hills over the Colo- 
rado line before Government moved them out to 
Utah, Apaches in Arizona, and Shoshones when 
we have been up at our claims in the Big Horn 
country/’ 

“ I wish I could see an Indian,” sighed Mary. 

“ Well, you can when we go to the races at 
Cheyenne, Frontier Day,” said Fred. “ The 
Shoshones always go to town in their wagons 
then for a good picnic like all the rest of 
Wyoming.” 

“Real live Indians!” exclaimed Mary. 
“ Are n’t people afraid of them? ” 

“ Not a bit of it. They don’t go on the war- 
path any more. They ’re peaceable citizens these 
days.” 

Mary looked thoughtful. She was wondering 
if people might not be deceived, if perhaps there 
might not be real danger from the Indian tribes. 
She secretly resolved to keep as far away from 
their wigwams as possible when she went with 
her uncle’s family to Cheyenne for Frontier 
Day. 

Next day Mary was over at the log play-house. 
She had been reading the Fenimore Cooper 
story, seated in the barrel chair at the entrance of 
her lodge, when out of the wilderness beyond 
three Indians emerged and came slowly towards 
her. 


160 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mary neither saw nor heard them, she was so 
much absorbed in her book. Nearer they came 
and nearer until they were only a few yards dis- 
tant. Then they paused and stood looking at 
her in silence. She sat there in her red gown, her 
eyes downcast, her fair hair tumbled by the 
breeze, her book in her hand, the flush of interest 
on her face. 

One of the Indians spoke to the other in her 
own language, in a whisper: 

“ It is not well. She is a stranger in this 
region.” 

“ None the less,” replied in the same language 
the eldest and darkest of the three, “ she may 
have the knowledge desired. I would myself 
speak to her if I were fluent as you in the lingo 
of the paleface. Of what value is all you have 
learned? ” 

“ I will address her, if you command it,” said 
the younger one who had first spoken, stepping 
forward. 

Mary had looked up at sound of their voices. 
It seemed to her as if the Indians had stepped 
from the pages of her book. She was delighted 
rather than alarmed, all the more that the three 
Indians confronting her were, — two squaws and a 
pappoose, two women and a baby! She stood 
up, her Anger in her closed book. 

“ The day wanes and you are far from home,” 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 


161 


said Mary. “ May I not offer you such rude 
shelter as this cabin may afford?” 

The elder squaw looked puzzled. Over her 
shoulder from the bundle where she carried him 
peeped the stolid brown face and inquiring eyes 
of the baby boy on her back. 

The younger Indian woman smiled. She wore 
a clean white shirt-waist with sleeves in this year’s 
style, a black serge skirt, a sailor hat, a black rib- 
bon necktie and a white collar. On her feet were 
moccasins. 

“We thank you for your hospitality, oh pale- 
face maiden,” she replied in English, with an ex- 
cellent accent. 

“Goodness! You speak English!” cried 
Mary, very much excited. 

The young woman smiled again, looking at 
the book in Mary’s hand. 

“We are indeed far from home and we have 
lost our way,” she said. “ If you are not a 
stranger in this region, it may be you can direct 
us towards Pine Landing?” 

“Pine Landing! Mercy! That is nearly 
five miles up the river,” cried Mary. 

The young Indian woman dropped to the 
ground and signed to her mother to give her the 
baby. The old squaw came grumbling as she 
loosened the buckskin thongs which held the 
baby’s bundle to her shoulders. Her own gar- 


XX 


16 ^ 


RED TOP RANCH 


merits were a medley of buckskin and blanket. 
Her moccasins had seen much travel. 

“ Ugh! ” she grunted, and muttered something 
in her own language. 

“ My mother says it ’s all my fault we are off 
the track,” said the young woman, cuddling her 
baby. “ She wanted to leave the river a long 
way back. You don’t look as though you be- 
longed to these parts? ” 

“ No, my home is back east,” replied Mary, 
who had been looking from one to the other with 
keen interest. 

“ I spotted you for a tenderfoot as soon as I 
set eyes on you,” said the young woman. “ If 
I had n’t been sure of it by sight, I should have 
known it as soon as you began getting off book- 
talk at me. I ’ll bet you are reading one of 
Cooper’s stories.” 

“ Yes, I am,” said Mary, too astonished for 
words. 

“ My teacher out in Ogden made me read some 
of them. Those books make me sort of tired.” 

“ I like them,” said Mary. 

“ Too much high falutin for me,” said the 
young Indian woman. “ I am half white my- 
self. So is my husband. My name is Mrs. 
O’Brien. My mother ’s pure Ute, though. Her 
name is Bird-of-the-Mountain when she ’s at 
home. When we hit the trail for town I tell her 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 


163 


to call herself Mrs. Bird. It sounds more 
stylish.’’ 

“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Bird?” Mary 
pointed to the barrel chair. 

The old squaw shook her head, dropped on the 
ground at the foot of a cottonwood tree, drew out 
an old clay pipe, and was soon surrounded by a 
cloud of evil-smelling tobacco smoke. 

“ Ma ’s got a grouch at white folks this sum- 
mer,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “ She has been out at 
the White Rock Reservation in Utah ever since 
Uncle Sam took her ancestral Ute property up 
here in the hills away from her. She made me 
make my husband come back here and buy the 
land where she was born. You see my husband 
was educated and he does n’t have to stay on the 
reservation. Ma came tramping back here from 
White Rock not long ago. She says the Great 
White Father at Washington who drove her an- 
cestors’ descendants into the desert is going to 
hear about it this fall.” 

“ The President ! ” 

“ Yes. Ma ’s a born princess, though you 
would n’t think it to look at her.” 

“An Indian princess like Pocahontas!” ex- 
claimed Mary. 

“Yes; she says she was just such a high 
stepper when she was young. She is not too old 
yet to stir up trouble among our Ute relations 


164 


RED TOP RANCH 


out there in the reservation Government gave 
them.” 

“ But if Government gave them the land ” 

began Mary. 

“ Well, I can tell you it is pretty poor land 
out around White Rock. Ma ’s about right. 
Unless they strike radium or some other kind of 
ore out there the Utes can’t get a living out of 
the ground.” 

The Indian baby finished his repast and lay 
back on his mother’s lap and blinked at the 
sky. 

“ What is his name? ” Mary knelt down on the 
grass beside the mother and child. 

“ Patsy. Patrick O’Brien, for his pa,” said 
Mrs. O’Brien. 

“Isn’t he a dear!” Mary slipped her fore- 
finger into the tiny paw that closed around it 
warmly. “ There ’s nothing so nice in all the 
world as a baby, is there? ” 

Her face was on a level with the young 
mother’s; they looked into each other’s eyes for a 
moment as the woman replied: 

“ Well, babies do make a good deal of work. 
I am glad I had my mother to carry him for me 
to-day. We ’re on our way to Laramie to take 
the train for Cheyenne. My husband was to 
meet us at Pine Landing with a livery rig from 
Laramie. He ’s been on to town to tend to some 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 


165 


business. Have your folks in the house got a 
telephone? ” 

“ How do you know there is any house near 
here except this one? ” laughed Mary. 

“ Ah, verily, I know the signs of human habi- 
tation!” Mrs. O’Brien smiled. “Yonder curls 
the house fire which tells of a tea-kettle that boils 
on a stove.” She rose and shook the twigs from 
her serge skirt. “ Come, Ma, we ’ll go in and 
telephone to Pat that we ’re here.” 

The old squaw shook her head and said some- 
thing in the Ute language. Mary looked at her 
with enormous curiosity. 

“ Ma makes a hit with you, does n’t she? ” said 
Mrs. O’Brien. 

“Yes, she does. She interests me very much,” 
answered Mary. 

“ She often tells me in Ute that I make her 
tired. She says I am neither an Indian woman 
nor paleface. She ’s the real old stuff herself, 
just the kind we make our ancestors of out in the 
country. Some of the girls at the school I went 
to in Ogden have Indian grandmas, but I have 
an Indian ma. My husband sent me to school all 
winter before I got married to educate me. He ’s 
educated himself. Sometimes he says he wishes 
I was n’t. Well, I can thank my mother for one 
thing. She taught me to ride a horse as soon as 
I could walk. We ’re both going to ride in the 


166 


RED TOP RANCH 


races at Cheyenne, Frontier Day. My husband 
wanted to try to enter me this year in the white 
women’s races. But ma said she would n’t go to 
Cheyenne herself if he did. She said it would 
be denying her and a disgrace. My mother is 
real particular. Well, come along, ma! Let’s 
go into the house and telephone.” 

Again the old squaw shook her head and re- 
peated her words. 

“ What does she say? ” asked Mary. 

“ She says it is good enough for her in the 
cabin. She ’s got some food in her bundle. She 
says if you will let her she ’ll stay right here till 
I ring up Pat and drag her away.” 

“ Oh, yes, she is welcome to stay.” 

Mary conducted Mrs. O’Brien, the boy in her 
arms, into the sitting-room by way of the front 
porch, introduced her to her aunt, and explained 
her wishes. Mrs. Merwin was kind and polite, 
and made the visitor comfortable when they 
learned by telephone from Pine Landing that 
Patrick O’Brien, not finding his wife and moth- 
er-in-law there, had gone up into the hills by the 
trail they were coming down. Mrs. Merwin gave 
Mrs. O’Brien and her child the room Elizabeth 
Wright had occupied and went out with Mary 
to see the Indian mother. She was greatly re- 
lieved, on finding a blanket squaw, that Mrs. Bird 
preferred to stay in Mary’s cabin for the night. 


WHEN THE INDIANS CAME 


16 T 


It was late that evening before, by dint of tele- 
phoning on both sides, Mr. O’Brien learned 
where his lost family had found shelter, and late 
the next forenoon when he appeared with his 
horses and spring wagon and carried them off 
to town. 

“We ’ll have to nail boards over the old cabin, 
I guess, Mary,” said her uncle after supper that 
evening. “ You do seem to catch the strangest 
kind of folks in your play-house that I ever 
saw. That old Ute woman is one of old Ouray’s 
kin, and he was a fighter. 

“ Was he a chief? ” 

“ Yes, and the chief of our troubles when we 
first came out to Wyoming. We had trouble 
enough with those fellows, from over the Colo- 
rado line.” 

“ I thought they had all gone for good,” said 
Aunt Kate. 

“ Mrs. Bird-of-the-Mountain has been out in 
Utah, but she came back to see her daughter,” ex- 
plained Mary, “ and little Patsy. Is n’t he the 
cunningest baby ! ” 

“ I am glad you admire him,” laughed Uncle 
Billy. “ To me that brown kid looks worse than 
the burned edge of a buckwheat cake.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


FRONTIER DAY 

Mary had heard a good deal about Frontier 
Day ever since she arrived in Wyoming. 

As the time drew near for the great annual 
August festival of riding, roping, and racing at 
Cheyenne, there was much bustle of preparation 
at Red Top Ranch. Mrs. Merwin rode Venus 
cross-saddle, every morning; the famous mare 
was in training for the ladies’ thoroughbred 
race. Fred was busy with cow-ponies he was to 
ride, and dashed about the ranch with a preoccu- 
pied air. The hired men were full of excitement 
and anticipation. Bud Todd alone was serene. 

“ You see it ’s like this,” he said to Mary out 
by the corral, the evening before he started with 
Fred and Jim and Donnelly and the string of 
horses they were to lead to Cheyenne. “ It ’s like 
this. I am entered for the wild horse race and 
for the bucking and pitching contests. A man 
has to know how for years to be in them races. 
You can’t go and get up your examination pa- 
pers the last day in the afternoon. 

i68 


FRONTIER DAY 


169 


No, I suppose not. I do wish I could ride 
at Frontier Day.” Mary looked wistfully 
through the rails at Fireball in the corral. 

“ It ’s a pity they don’t have a Little- Girl-and- 
Trick-Mare race,” responded Bud sympatheti- 
cally. “ Say! ” he added with energy. “ There ’s 
no reason you can’t ride your Fireball even if 
you don’t race her. I ’ll take her to Cheyenne 
for you. Why don’t you speak to your uncle? 
He ’s got influnce. He could take you right in- 
side the mile track. You ’d have lots more fun 
in the saddle than sitting starched up in the 
grand stand.” 

Mary gave him a grateful look and ran to find 
her uncle. He was sitting in the front porch 
with Aunt Kate. 

“No reason why not!” said Uncle Billy 
heartily when he heard of Bud’s plan. “ Bud 
can lead Nibs along to town for me too, and you 
and I will see the show together in style.” 

Two days later, Mr. and Mrs. Merwin, with 
Mary, Bert, and Charlie, started for Laramie in 
the new spring wagon, at four o’clock in the 
morning to take the early eastbound train for 
Cheyenne. They had baggage with them for a 
three days’ stay. They got up by lamplight; 
dawn was just coming as they ate breakfast at 
the table on the porch. Mary was the first one 
in this out-door breakfast-room. 


170 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ I ’m sorry you are not going to Cheyenne 
too, to see the show,” she said to Mrs. Malley, 
who was spreading the cloth and putting the 
plates on the breakfast table. 

“ Thank you, but I ’d rather stay at home and 
get rested.” 

“ It will rest you, I suppose, not to have to 
cook for anybody but Job and yourself, won’t 
it? ” said Mary. 

“Yes, and I ’ll enjoy helping him look after 
the calves and things. I ’m too busy most of the 
time to get out and take a look at the growing 
creatures. And I ’m powerful fond of animals 
myself, just like you.” 

Mary nodded appreciatively, then clapped her 
hands as Bert and Charlie came tumbling down- 
stairs. 

“ I ’m up first! I ’m up first! ” she cried. 

“ It seems just like the Fourth of July, does n’t 
it? ” Bert’s freckled face was aglow as he said it. 

“ Frontier Day beats Fourth of July. We 
are going somewhere now! ” Charlie said, pinch- 
ing him. The two promptly got into a scuffle 
which lasted until their father and mother ap- 
peared and Mrs. Malley brought out the hot 
platter of chops and the coffee. 

The sun was rising as they drove past the Lake 
on their way to Laramie, Mary was on the front 
seat with her uncle, Bert and Charlie on the back 


FRONTIER DAY 


171 


seat with their mother. Just as the sky was get- 
ting golden streaks across the blue, Mr. Merwin 
turned around to speak to his wife, and she ex- 
claimed, gazing at him with displeasure: 

“For Mercy’s sake, what shirt have you got 
on?” 

He put his hand to his chest. 

“ A nice ‘ biled ’ shirt ! Don’t look so cross at 
me, mamma.” 

“ Mary, why did n’t you tell him before we 
started? ” 

“ Tell him what. Auntie? ” Mary’s eyes were 
dancing with fun. 

“You two! You two!” groaned Mrs. Mer- 
win. “ Well, we must turn around and go back 
to the house. Turn those horses around, Billy 
Merwin. You’ll have to change! I won’t go 
to Cheyenne with you with that ridiculous old 
ragged shirt on ! ” 

“I’ll bet a dollar you will!” Uncle Billy 
touched Dick and Dolly with the whip and they 
trotted faster than ever. Bert and Charlie 
laughed aloud. Mary’s glance met her uncle’s. 

“Your shirt isn’t so very ragged,” she whis- 
pered. “ You can change when we get to the 
hotel! ” 

“William Merwin!” said Aunt Kate. 

“Katharine Merwin!” he replied solemnly, 
and clucked to the horses to go faster. The 


172 


RED TOP RANCH 


children were all laughing. “ I ’m no dude, 
lady. Besides, you would lock me up on bread 
and water for a week if I let you miss the very 
first train. K-k-kh Dick. Get up Dolly. 

Mary began to sing. 

“ Here goes the Raggedy Man ! The Raggedy Man, 
The Raggedy Man! 

Here goes the Raggedy Man all the way to town 1 ” 

“ Well, Miss Imperence, you ’re backing up 
your uncle in his iniquity,” laughed Aunt Kate, 
humming the song that Uncle Billy and the boys 
were joining. 

The spring wagon rolled rapidly away to- 
wards Laramie over the smooth road of the plain, 
the whole family singing merrily together: 

‘‘ Here goes the Raggedy Man, 

All the way to town ! ” 

The excursion train for Frontier Day, with 
steam up, stood on the siding ; people were crowd- 
ing into the cars. Many of them carried picnic 
baskets, for but one day’s stay; others, like the 
Merwin family, had hand baggage for three days 
at the State capital. Everybody was laughing 
and talking and jostling. Mary sat with her 
uncle in the second car. Aunt Kate and the 
boys opposite them. As soon as the train got 
under way,, the Laramie band in the front car 


FRONTIER DAY 


173 


struck up, Everybody works but father; ” and 
played while the train pulled up the long grade. 
They passed the monument to General Sherman 
at the highest point on the Union Pacific, and 
after a rollicking trip rolled down to the station 
at Cheyenne. 

Fred met them at the station and carried 
Mary’s hand-bag to the Inter-Ocean Hotel, 
where the family were to stay. Thousands of 
people had already arrived, from Denver and 
Nebraska, as well as from all over Wyoming. 
The town was in gala dress. Banners of red and 
yellow, the colors of the festival, flags and rib- 
bons decorated the streets ; shops and houses flut- 
tered the bright colors. Cowboys in red and 
yellow shirts and wearing ‘‘ shaps-chaparrejos,” 
— great woolly-leathern leggings, — with gray or 
white sombreros on their heads, galloped about 
the streets. 

That night the mile high City of the Plains 
made carnival. Mary watched from the hotel 
window for awhile, then her uncle took her out 
into it all. Hundreds of young people and 
hundreds of children, wearing masks, blowing 
horns, and cracking whips, went gaily through 
the brightly lighted streets, pelting one another 
with confetti, till the sidewalks were covered with 
the multi-colored litter of bright paper. The 
moon came out ; midnight struck, then the crowd 


174 


RED TOP RANCH 


went off to sleep in all sorts of places from hotel 
rooms or friends’ “ spare beds,” to wagon 
camps or store-counters or blankets under the 
stars. 

Thousands more people poured into town next 
morning for the first day of the races on special 
trains from neighboring states, and local ex- 
tras bringing the population of several hundred 
miles of the mountain west. Wagon loads of 
Shoshone Indians came and encamped to take 
their part in the show. 

When two o’clock came on the first day of the 
races, and Mary cantered out on Fireball beside 
her Uncle Billy, fully twenty thousand people 
had assembled at Frontier Park. 

The grand stand and the benches were crowded. 
Hundreds of wagons and buggies made points 
of vantage for many spectators. The tops of 
cars of the special trains that lined up across the 
mile-track were covered with men ; boys by 
hundreds were perched on fences, horse sheds, 
and every possible place. 

Mary’s eyes were brighter than ever as dressed 
in her brown linen habit with a brown cap on her 
head, the red and yellow ribbons of the day fast- 
ened above her heart with a pin bearing the 
portrait of President Roosevelt, she rode past 
the grand stand with her uncle. She saw her 
aunt with Fred awaiting her turn to ride in the 


FRONTIER DAY 


175 


ladies’ race just as her Aunt Kate saw them too, 
and nodding lifted her gauntleted hand. 

It was a cloudless August day. The sky was 
deep, deep blue, vivid and glowing. The great 
plain swept away on one side, yellow and shim- 
mering in the sunshine. On the other the line 
of peaks over in Colorado bordered the blue 
sky with the grayish white of last winter’s 
snow before the pure September snows 
begin. 

“Look, oh, look. Uncle Billy!” cried Mary 
in great excitement, as at a turn of the way they 
came upon the encampment of Shoshone Indians. 
Their white tents were pitched among the cot- 
tonwood trees a stone’s throw from the grand 
stand. 

“ Behold our Shoshones — Government guests 
at the show 1 ” returned her uncle, reining in for 
Mary to watch for a few moments the copper- 
colored men, women, and children standing idly 
about among the cottonwoods. Most of them 
were in ceremonial paint and feathers, gorgeous 
in festival attire. 

“Do you see your Ute friends?” asked Mr, 
Merwin. “ All In jins look alike to me.” 

“ No, but maybe they don’t like these Sho- 
shone women,” said Mary. 

“ Perhaps not,” assented her uncle. “ I ’ve 
known other women besides squaws who 


176 


RED TOP RANCH 


would n’t associate with each other. Come 
along, chick.” 

He rode forward and Mary followed. 

“Look, Uncle Billy, look!” she cried again. 
“There ’s Bud Todd!” 

They were riding into the enclosure, just be- 
yond the high boards of the corral where the wild 
horses were penned, hidden from view. Bud 
was one of twelve men lining up to an official of 
the races to draw his number for the wild horse 
contest. When he had drawn it he walked over 
to speak to them. He showed Mary the bit of 
cardboard with his number. It was Number 
One. 

“ I ’ve seen the prize,” he said. “ It ’s a sad- 
dle, best and handsomest saddle ever made in 
Cheyenne or Laramie. I ’ve been feeling the 
need of a new saddle myself for some time ! ” he 
added drolly. 

“ I hope you get it. Bud,” said Mary heart- 
ily. “ Have you seen the horse you are to 
ride? ” 

“ No, not yet, and I sha’n’t see him till to-mor- 
row when the wild horse race comes off. They ’ve 
got ’em all shut up behind that high fence in the 
corral.” 

“ Bucking and pitching to-day, eigh, Todd? ” 
asked Mr. Merwin. 

“ That ’s the ticket,” said Bud, and started off 


FRONTIER DAY 


177 


to watch from the fence the first cow-pony race 
just called. 

Fred Merwin rode in that race. Twenty boys 
and young men on their best ponies sped round 
the mile track when the word was given, but poor 
Mary, who had never been on horseback in a 
crowd before, did not see half of the race. Fire- 
ball, unused to so much commotion, danced nerv- 
ously about. In her anxiety not to crush against 
the girl whose horse crowded hers on the other 
side, Mary was fussing with her skirt or her 
bridle half the time. 

Fred made a good run for it, but came third on 
Nibs under the wire. Mary wondered how the 
people could cheer for anybody but Fred. Uncle 
Billy laughed. 

“ Don’t look so sad, puss,” he said. “ Fred’s 
only a kid. Plenty of time for him to win races 
yet. Hello ! they ’re calling the race your aunt 
is in. Bring your mare down the enclosure a 
little way.” He led and Mary followed to the 
end of the line of fifty on-lookers on horseback. 
Mary now had a free outlook across the field, and 
Fireball stood reasonably still. 

In front of the Judges’ stand, with all the 
brightly dressed people in the grand stand for 
a background, was Aunt Kate on Venus, ma- 
noeuvring for place at the start among five 
women and girls on thoroughbreds. Her com- 


12 


178 


RED TOP RANCH 


petitors were from four other Wyoming ranches. 
One, a girl with a pink shirt-waist, riding a white 
horse, was from far away as Cody, up by Yellow- 
stone Park. 

Mrs. Merwin’s dark hair was braided and 
wound closely around her head. She wore a 
jaunty jockey’s cap, old-gold in color. On the 
jacket of her short dark habit was a little rosette 
of red and yellow ribbon. 

“Go!” 

The word was given; the ladies’ race began. 
Venus lagged behind the others at the start, then, 
at touch of her mistress’s bridle, galloped forward 
at the first chance, got the inside track, and held 
it, third, for nearly half of the mile. 

“ I ’m afraid Auntie is going to lose too,” said 
Mary. 

“ Watch her! ” was Uncle Billy’s only answer 
as Venus, running now at her best pace, took 
second place. Aunt Kate touched her with her 
crop. A moment later Venus was abreast of 
the only rivals she and her rider feared in all 
Wyoming, the girl in the pink waist on the white 
horse who had held the lead for more than half of 
the mile. The other three were left further and 
further behind, Venus and the white horse ran 
neck and neck while their riders plied their whips 
and leaning forward, almost standing in their 
stirrups, raced madly towards the wire. The 


FRONTIER DAY 


179 


crowd was cheering and calling the names of the 
horses and the colors of the riders. 

Suddenly Fireball, on whose neck Mary in her 
excitement had dropped the bridle, darted for- 
ward and galloped straight across the grass 
towards her mother Venus, reaching the fence 
beside the Judges’ stand as Venus shot under the 
wire. Mary’s face was jflaming as Aunt Kate 
waving her crop to her turned, rode back, and 
drew up in the track outside the fence. 

“ Nice of you to come over here, dear,” she 
said. 

“ Fireball did it herself,” stammered Mary. 
“ I — I did n’t dare try to stop her when she 
started. I felt so — conspicuous ! ” 

“ Nobody minded,” said Aunt Kate, herself 
the centre of observation, and rode away to get 
her purse of gold as her husband galloped up to 
take charge of Mary. They rode round then to 
meet her, the victor, and she came with them 
to watch the wild steer roping, the bucking and 
pitching contests, and the rest of the day’s 
events. 

Next day as Fireball daintily picked her way 
through the crowd at Frontier Park, following 
Tom and Venus into the enclosure again, Mary 
saw Mrs. O’Brien. She had rolled her white 
shirt-waist sleeves above her elbows; streaks of 
green and yellow paint covered her arms. Her 


180 


RED TOP RANCH 


collar was turned in; bands of green paint were 
around her neck on her dark skin* She was bare- 
headed. One long black braid was hanging 
down her back. The other was coiled on top of 
her head supporting a tuft of green feathers. 
Smiling she came over and stood beside Fireball 
as Mary reined in. 

“ How do you do by this time, Miss Lloyd? ” 
she greeted her. 

“ I ’m well, thank you,” said Mary. “ How is 
your mother? ” 

“ Look at her over yonder. Her appearance 
speaks for itself.” 

Mary looked. Bird-of-the-Mountain stood at 
a little distance, silent and abstracted. She wore 
new beaded moccasins, green gaiters, a buck- 
skin garment like a boy’s bathing suit worked 
with green and yellow porcupine quills, and a 
wonderful headdress made of gay quills and 
beads and waving feathers. Her bare arms and 
legs were painted in fantastic colors. She paid 
no attention to Mary, but stood with her eyes 
fixed on her saddleless pony that she held by the 
bridle. 

“Ma certainly is a peach, and no mistake,” 
said Mrs. O’Brien. “ She will win the Indian 
women’s race all right. None of those Shoshone 
biddies over there will stand any show when my 
old girl gets up on her pony.” 


FRONTIER DAY 


181 


‘‘Are you going to race too? ” 

“ Yes, with my mother. Well, so long,” said 
Mrs. O’Brien. 

“ Good-bye,” called Mary, as Fireball hurried 
after Tom and Venus. On the fence at the 
opening where they turned into the enclosure sat 
a young man, half Indian, holding beside him 
on a post of the fence a solemn-faced brown 
youngster. 

“Why, there’s Patsy O’Brien!” exclaimed 
Mary. 

Her aunt and uncle turned to look. 

“ His dad has to play nursemaid while his wo- 
men folks race cow-ponies,” said her uncle. 
“ Well, Wyoming is a great place for women’s 
rights 1 ” 

“ I do hope he won’t let that poor little child 
fall!” said Mrs. Merwin anxiously. 

“ Don’t you worry, Kate,” said her husband. 
“ Patsy would sit still on that post if his dad 
went off and left him. Pappooses are not 
nervous.” 

The cheering began. The race was on. Bird- 
of-the-Mountain mounted on her pony and her 
rivals on theirs were lining up in front of the 
Judges’ stand. The man with the megaphone 
announced the first event, the Indian women’s 
cow-pony race. 

“ Go!” 


182 


RED TOP RANCH 


Round the mile track like a flame of color 
flashed the ten women and girls on horseback, 
without saddles, riding as their ancestresses rode 
before ever the paleface came, while twenty 
thousand people cheered again and again. It 
was all a rushing mass of color and motion for 
three quarters of a mile. Then in the last quar- 
ter, Bird-of-the-Mountain, her daughter, and one 
of the Shoshone women came out of the crowd 
neck and neck, whipping their ponies towards 
the goal. At the last moment, the old Ute 
squaw shot half a neck ahead and dashed under 
the wire. She had won! She halted her pony in- 
stantly, and sat very still in stolid dignity till a 
man from the Judges’ stand brought her money, 
then she and her daughter disappeared. 

There was another wild steer roping contest 
on this second day. Bud Todd who lost in yes- 
terday’s roping won to-day. He came to speak 
to the family from Red Top not flve minutes be- 
fore the crowning event of the three days’ show 
was called, — the wild horse race. 

Twelve wild horses that no man had ever 
mounted were ready in the big corral. One by 
one, according to number, they would be released. 

“ The cowboy who first saddles and rides his 
wild horse is the one who wins in this contest,” 
Mrs. Merwin explained to Mary. “ Bud may 
have all the help he needs from Jim and Don- 


FRONTIER DAY 


183 


nelly to rope and bridle his horse, but he must 
saddle and mount without help when the word 
is given. The man who saddles and stays on 
even two minutes wins.” 

The contest was called. The corral gate was 
opened. 

“ Number One! ” shouted the man at the gate. 

‘‘Number One!” responded Bud Todd, rid- 
ing slowly up on Nibs, his long noosed rope ready 
in his hand. 

“ Number One! ” shouted a man in the crowd 
near the gate. 

It was the Elks’ Secretary. 

At that moment out into the enclosure bounded 
wild horse Number One. With a vicious snort 
he was off across the grass like the wind. 

It was the little buckskin broncho ! 

Bud galloped after him, swinging his rope. 

“Oh, oh, what a terrible thing to happen! 
Bud can’t ride that pony! ” said Mary. 

Her Aunt Kate was laughing. 

Uncle Billy’s face wore a blank expression, as 
if he had seen nothing at all. He knew very well 
that the Elks’ Secretary and the man at the 
gate were watching him, to see how he would take 
this practical joke. Whoever might be con- 
cerned in this turning of the tables on Bud Todd, 
would also be watching the master of Red Top 
Ranch. 


184 


RED TOP RANCH 


When Mr. Merwin spoke, it was in a low 
tone. 

“Don’t look so distressed, ducky,” he com- 
manded Mary. “ Pretend you never laid eyes 
on that bronk before. You may be sure Bud 
won’t back out. He knows when the joke is on 
him. He’ll get even, all right!” 

Bud Todd did not back out. He galloped 
furiously after that buckskin, his jaw set, his 
rope flying. 

“ What does it all mean? How did he happen 
to draw the buckskin,” asked Mary. 

“ Hush 1 More than the big prize saddle is at 
stake for Bud,” whispered Aunt Kate, leaning 
from her saddle and pretending to arrange 
Mary’s necktie. “ All Wyoming will know by 
tomorrow’s newspapers that Bud Todd sent an 
outlaw that he couldn’t ride as a gift saddle- 
horse to the Elk’s Fair. Everybody will know, 
too, that they have managed it so that Bud would 
draw that particular horse to ride at Frontier 
Day.” 

“ Gee whiz! ” cried Uncle Billy, suddenly seiz- 
ing Fireball’s bridle. “ Here comes that bronk. 
We must all scatter! ” 

The outlaw bore down upon the line of on- 
lookers. He came tearing among them like a 
mowing-machine on the red top grass in a moun- 
tain meadow. Fifty riders scattered in every 


FRONTIER DAY 


185 


direction. Mary found herself back of the post 
where Patsy O’Brien sat beside his father. 
Ponies and thoroughbreds rushed out of the way 
of the little buckskin like mad, while his three 
pursuers came after. He wheeled and was away 
towards the grand stand, splintering the fence 
like kindling wood before him. When he was 
headed away from that crowded quarter, he 
rushed wildly round the track, the three cowboys 
full gallop at his heels. The broncho had passed 
the place where Patsy O’Brien and his father 
were perched on the fence, when he suddenly 
wheeled and dashed through the fence. The 
child’s father, alarmed, sprang to the ground; 
the child remained for an instant on the post. In 
another he would have been under the feet of the 
brute, but in that instant. Bud Todd swooped 
forward and not pausing in his gallop, grasped 
the little Indian by the back of his clothes, and 
with one arm around the child rode on in un- 
checked pursuit. 

The crowd stood up and cheered. Bud seemed 
to realize then for the first that he could not hope 
to rope the wild horse with a baby in his arms. He 
smiled and waved his sombrero in response, as 
Jim and Donnelly headed the buckskin round. 
The horse was charging towards him. Mary 
Lloyd chanced to be nearest him of anybody. 
Bud dashed by her and placed the child on Fire- 


186 


RED TOP RANCH 


ball in front of her with one swing of his arm and 
was gone. 

Mary laughed aloud, and held Patsy close. 
The twenty thousand people cheered like mad — 
cheered and cheered and cheered! 

Another minute and Bud had roped the out- 
law. Jim and Donnelly galloped to his aid. 
Soon the horse was tied in ropes as if he w^ere 
done up in a hammock, and was hauled some- 
where near the Judges’ stand where he wajs held, 
while eleven other wild horses, young horses just 
out of the herd, not creatures of evil reputation 
like himself, were let out of the corral, caught 
and brought up to the point of departure. 

The moment came. Twelve big saddles lay 
sprawled on the ground beside the twelve horses ; 
twelve cowboys with keen eyes and set jaws 
heard the word: 

“ Go!” 

The assistant cowboys helped loosen the 
bridled heads. Then the contestants grasped the 
bits; they saddled and cinched; they strove to 
mount. For ten minutes the space where they 
were was one wild, writhing, seething, blur; one 
mass of horses and men. The crowd held its 
breath and looked. Not one man of eleven 
could get up on his beast. 

Suddenly out in front of them all, on the mile 
track, his sombrero on his head, a look of serenity 



Bud placed the Indian baby in Mary's arms 


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FRONTIER DAY 


187 


on his face, rode Bud Todd astride the little buck- 
skin broncho. One foot was in the stirrup on 
one side of the horse, and one foot in the stirrup 
on the other side. The outlaw arose; he seemed 
to stand up on the hairs of his tail. Bud strug- 
gled and beat him. He descended and put his 
nose to the ground. He rose again. He 
humped his back like a camel over and over again. 
He pitched like a little yacht in a choppy sea. 
His master sat firm. He whirled round and 
round. He bucked and bucked and bucked. He 
balked, — then he bolted! 

This was easy at last for Bud Todd. He lifted 
his sombrero to the cheering crowd, and the 
crowd went wild with applause as he rode plac- 
idly off around the mile track. 

The outlaw was conquered at last. 

Bud brought him up to the wire on an easy 
gallop, jumped off, and stood modestly awaiting 
his award while still his eleven competitors were 
struggling to saddle and ride. 

He was called to the Judges’ stand and re- 
ceived his prize saddle before the multitude with 
a face unmoved, solemn as usual. Then he left 
the buckskin with Jim and Donnelly and came 
on foot to find the family from Red Top Ranch. 

“ Good for you, Todd! ” Mr. Merwin greeted 
him. 

Bud nodded his thanks. 


188 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ Do you mind letting Miss Mary bring the 
Injun kid down to where the buckskin is?” he 
inquired. 

Mr. Merwin hesitated a minute. Then he un- 
derstood and laughed aloud. 

“All right, all right!” he consented. “Go 
with Bud to your pet bronk, Mary. See your 
friend through! ” 

Mary wonderingly obeyed. Fireball daintily 
made her way down the track. Bud disappeared 
for a moment and came back from one of the 
peanut stands with a paper of pink striped candy 
which he handed to Mary. 

“ Can’t you and the kid feed some sugar candy 
to that bronk as a reward of merit? ” he asked. 

“ Yes, of course! ” said Mary heartily. “ He 
deserves it ! ” She guided Fireball up to the 
outlaw, where Jim and Donnelly were standing 
by his head and heels, and there before all Wyo- 
ming she gave him sugar candy and he ate from 
her hand. 

Bud Todd went back to the Judges’ stand 
and spoke to the man with the megaphone. He 
smiled, hesitated; he consulted one or two of the 
officials about him, and received an amused 
consent. 

Then he lifted up his megaphone and shouted: 

“ Mr. Bud Todd, champion of Wyoming, has 
presented the wild horse that he has to-day tamed 


FRONTIER DAY 


189 


before you as a charitable offering to the Elks 
for the next fair. The horse will be sold as a 
children’s pet. Sugar candy subscriptions thank- 
fully received.” 

Then twenty thousand people laughed and 
cheered till the mountain echoes rang. 


CHAPTER XIV 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 

Mary found an envelope, addressed to her- 
self, lying on her uncle’s desk when they re- 
turned to the ranch next day. It contained a 
letter from her father, one from her mother, and 
one from her sister Edith, all saying how glad 
they should be to see her when she got home next 
week. 

“ Next week! ” Mary looked up with surprise. 
“ It does n’t seem possible that it is almost time 
for school to begin. Mother says it ’s a week 
from Monday. It will be nice to see them again, 

but I wish ” she stopped, caught by the odd 

look on her uncle’s face as he read a telegram 
that was with his letters. “ What is it, Uncle 
Billy?” she asked. 

“ Never mind,” he replied, turning over the 
paper. 

“Well, here’s something to mind!” cried 
Aunt Kate from her rocking-chair and letters. 
“ Here ’s Mary’s mother inviting me to bring 
Mary home myself. She says it is high time I 

190 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


191 


came East not only to visit her, but to go shop- 
ping in New York now we are getting rich.” 

“ Well, we ’re not as rich as we ’re going to be 
— maybe,” said Uncle Billy with a queer thrill in 
his voice. “ Look at this, Kitty.” He rose and 
handed the telegram to his wife. She took it, 
read it in a glance, then sat gazing at the yellow 
paper with a serious face. By and by she came 
and perched on the arm of her husband’s chair. 

“ Well, little woman? ” 

“ If you had known while we were in Cheyenne 
you could have gone right on up to the Big Horn 
country,” she said, trying to speak cheerfully. 
Then suddenly, as his arm went round her, she 
put her head down on his shoulder and sobbed. 
Uncle Billy sighed. Mary sat very still, look- 
ing at her own letter, trembling with sympathy. 
After awhile her aunt lifted her head. She 
smiled sweetly at Mary as she saw the look of 
love on the little girl’s face. 

“We can’t spare you to go home yet, Mary,” 
said her uncle, smoothing her aunt’s hair. “ I ’ll 
have to be away from home a good deal this fall. 
“ We ’ll telephone in to Laramie and get a tele- 
gram sent your father and mother asking them 
to lend you to us till 

“ Let ’s say till after Thanksgiving,” put in 
Aunt Kate eagerly. “ I ’ll write to them, too.” 
She rose, went across and took Mary’s upturned 


19S 


RED TOR RANCH 


face between her hands. “ Dearie,” she said, 
“ our telegram is about some mining property 
we own up in the Big Horn country. It says 
they have struck it rich in the — the ‘ Little Nelly 
Mine.’ We named one claim for each of the 
children, and now ” 

“ I ’ll love to stay with you,” said Mary. 
‘‘ Uncle Billy, may I write the telegram to send 
home myself? ” 

“ Yes, puss. What do you want to say? ” He 
took up a bit of paper and a pencil. 

Mary silently counted on her fingers for a 
moment. 

“ Ten words? ” she asked. 

“ Yes, ten at least,” he answered. “ I guess we 
can even afford you one or two extra words if 
you want them.” 

“No, I can get it all into ten. Listen! 
‘Dear Family: Unavoidably detained Wyo- 
ming until after Thanksgiving. See letter.’ ” 

Uncle Billy smiled. “ That ’s all right, chick. 
Now go and write your letter, while I start this 
over the wires. I ’ll add a ‘ please ’ on my own 
account.” He patted her head and went out to 
the telephone. 

Aunt Kate turned to Mary and held out her 
arms and Mary rushed into them. 

“ Darling, I am so glad you want to stay,” she 
said. “ I could n’t bear to be alone while your 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


193 


uncle is up at the mine. We named this mine 
for our baby when she was only a month old. 
You are such a comfort, dearie! ” 

“ I ’m so glad,” said Mary, with a little hug. 
“ Let ’s write our letters now, will you. Auntie, 
both together? ” 

“ Yes, indeed.” 

Before the letters were finished they stopped 
and made a plan which they described in their 
letters. This plan was carried out during all 
the bright weeks of autumn while Uncle Billy 
was away buying machinery for the mine, and 
superintending its being put in place. There 
was opened at Red Top, as soon as consent came 
for Mary to stay, what Bert and Charlie called 
“ The Mary Lloyd School of One Scholar.” 
Mrs. Merwin taught Mary regular lessons for 
two hours every afternoon. Bert and Charlie 
who now went to school at a log schoolhouse 
down the river, professed scorn of the school at 
home, until Fred told them one day at dinner 
that he had decided to fit for Laramie University 
with his mother, instead of going to town to 
school as he did last winter. 

Bert passed his plate to his mother for more 
pudding, shaking the plate high in the air. 

‘‘ Mamma, when Fred gets through with the 
University are you going to teach him enough 
to go East to college? ” he asked. 


13 


194 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mrs. Merwin smiled more gaily than she had 
since her husband went away. “ Put down your 
plate, Bert,” she said. “ Perhaps if I study hard 
myself I ’ll learn how to teach you to ask for 
pudding. What would your father say to you! ” 

It was late in October when a letter came from 
Mr. Merwin asking his wife to bring Mary and 
come at once to meet him at Powder River, a 
small town about half way between his mining 
camp and the nearest railroad station. Mrs. 
Merwin read this letter aloud at the supper- 
table. 

“ I shall come down from the hills and shall be 
at Powder River on Saturday, October 27th, if 
all goes well,” he wrote. “ A man from Chicago 
is due to meet me there on that day. I expect 
him to be my partner in developing the mine 
after I have shown it to him. I want you both 
to see it, and I ’ll get a wagon and take you to 
the mine. We ’ll meet at Powder River at the 
best hotel in town. Tell Mary it ’s a smaller 
hotel than the Waldorf-Astoria, so I ’ll have no 
trouble in finding you. You can take the stage 
for Powder River when you get off the train. I 
leave it to you, Kate — you ’re a good traveller — • 
to get time-tables and learn the best connections. 
But I hope you will start at once, so as to be sure 
to be at Powder River by the twenty-seventh. 
In haste to catch the mail. Love to all.” 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


195 


‘‘ Partial pa! ” said Bert. 

“ I call that favoritism,’’ said Charlie. 

Mrs. Merwin sat looking at Mary’s eager, 
glowing face, and silently poured for herself a 
cup of tea. 

“ Why did n’t partial dad send for one of his 
own good boys? ” demanded Bert. 

I ought to go along and take care of you. 
Mother,” said Fred. 

“ Are you really going, Auntie? ” asked Mary, 
in a voice that trembled with excitement. 

“ Yes, dear, I suppose we ’ll have to go,” said 
Mrs. Merwin. 

“ First class in geography ! The Mary Lloyd 
School! Where is Powder Biver?” asked 
Charlie. 

“ Run and get the atlas and I ’ll show you,” 
laughed Mary. When Charlie brought it from 
the sitting-room she opened it on the dining-room 
table and found the place where she was to meet 
her uncle. She borrowed Fred’s red pencil and 
marked it with a big red B for Billy. 

Two days later, after a long journey on the 
train, with two changes, Mary and her aunt 
found themselves towards sunset on Friday the 
only passengers left on the stage bound for Pow- 
der River. It was an old-fashioned mountain 
stage-coach, drawn by four horses. As they 
swung along the high, lonely road, the driver sat 


196 


RED TOP RANCH 


up on the seat in front, cracked his whip, and 
sang a song with a cheerful refrain that Mary 
felt like joining, only she was tired and sleepy; 
so instead she put her head down on her Aunt 
Kate’s lap and went to sleep. Mrs. Merwin was 
wishing as darkness came that she had staid 
in the railroad town until next morning and 
hired a livery team to drive out to the river 
station. This long, chilly ride which would last 
well into the night, was scarcely the thing for 
Mary. Of course, it was as safe as staying at 
home . 

Suddenly the stage stopped with a jerk. Mary 
sat up sleepily. They heard horsemen and the 
sound of voices and of pistols firing. Mary 
rubbed her eyes, wondering if she were dreaming. 
She leaned forward towards the window and saw 
a broad-faced, ugly old Indian with war-paint on 
his face and neck, war-paint on his buckskin 
shirt, and draggled feathers hanging from his 
old hat. 

“How do you do?” said Mary pleasantly. 
“Do you speak English?” 

Mrs. Merwin recognized the face and fell back 
with a faint cry. 

“ It ’s that horrid old Ute medicine man who 
used to be up in our hills,” she said. 

“ I asked you do you speak English? What 
is your name? ” persisted Mary. 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


197 


“Ugh!” grunted the old Indian. “Me 
Moonshine. Heap bad Indian.” 

“ Oh, you speak English then? ” said Mary. 
“ Well, if you are a Ute, you must be some re- 
lation to Mrs. O’Brien and little Patsy and Mrs. 
Bird-of-the-Mountain.” 

The Indian’s black eyes looked at her with a 
piercing glance. He leaned into the coach, with 
a quick motion, as if he were about to seize her, 
then jumped back and was gone in the darkness 
of the night. The face of the driver appeared at 
the other side. He opened the coach door. 

“ I am sorry for this disturbance, ma’am,” he 
said. 

“ What does it all mean? ” cried Mrs. Merwin. 
“ My husband supposed we would be safe in 
your coach ” 

“You are, you are, ma’am! It’s only some 
fool young men a-horseback. I guess they got 
the notion I ’d have your husband’s Chicago man 
aboard to-night, so they were going to shoot up 
the coach and try to scare him for a little fun.” 

“ Fun! ” exclaimed Mrs. Merwin and Mary in 
a breath. 

At that moment the driver was hurled in head 
first by strong arms outside ; the door was 
slammed shut and the coach started briskly off, 
the horses going at a great pace. 

“ Oh, oh, are you hurt? ” cried Mary. 


198 


RED TOP RANCH 


“ No.” The man sat up, looking dazed. He 
slowly got into the seat opposite Mrs. Merwin 
and Mary, while faster went the horses and the 
coach lurched and swung along the road mile 
after mile. 

“ I am afraid you are hurt,” said Mrs. Merwin 
at last, as he put his hand to his head. 

“ It kind of bumped me,” he said. I can’t 
make it out. I thought the boys all rode off as 
soon as they saw I had only a lady and a little 
girl aboard.” 

“ It must be Moonshine,” said Mary. “ Why 
don’t you lean from the window, and demand his 
surrender? ” 

The man smiled. “ That ’d be the story-book 
way, miss,” he said. “ But I have n’t got my 
gun.” After a time he added: “ It ’s up there on 
top.” 

“ You ought to be there,” cried Mary indig- 
nantly, “ instead of that horrid old Ute Indian.” 

“ Indian! ” Alert and anxious now, the driver 
opened the window, leaned out, and looked for- 
ward. He drew his head in again instantly. 
“ He is an Indian, all right,” he said soberly. He 
must have been with those boys. He ’s probabty 
taking us into camp. There ’s a band of several 
hundred Utes camped off down Powder River. 
They ’re on the war-path, too.” 

“ Nonsense! ” said Mrs. Merwin. “ It is six- 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


199 


teen years since there have been any Indians on 
the war-path in Wyoming.” 

“ These are out in their paint, all right. They 
are Utes, come from out White Rock way. Uncle 
Sam’s soldiers are after them too. I don’t want 
to scare you, but ” 

The coach lurched, rose upward, then sideways 
like a steamboat rolling in a heavy sea; suddenly 
it stopped, leaning sideways, and remained still. 

‘‘ Wheel ’s off,” said the driver, and flung open 
the upper door. He crawled out and went for- 
ward to the horses. Mrs. Merwin and Mary, 
huddled within, could hear his voice loud and 
angry, but no reply came. Mary peered out. 
She saw the Ute medicine-man, standing close- 
by, silent, with folded arms. At a little distance 
the light of a camp-fire shone before a large en- 
campment of Indian tepees. 

“ See, Auntie! ” Mary whispered, “ Moonshine 
has brought us to a camp.” 

Mrs. Merwin was not very much afraid; she 
had lived all her life in Wyoming, but she was 
a little frightened, and more for Mary than for 
herself. 

“ Keej) quiet, dear,” she whispered. “ The 
driver will do his best to take care of us.” 

“ There are some more Indians coming,” whis- 
pered Mary. “ He can’t get this coach up 
straight unless they help him.” 


RED TOP RANCH 


^00 

The new arrivals seemed not at all inclined to 
help the driver who struggled in vain to right the 
overturned vehicle. There were six or eight In- 
dians, and they lined up beside Moonshine and 
waited for him to act. After several minutes he 
walked across and looked into the coach. 

“ Come ! ” he commanded. 

Mary could feel her heart beating wildly; her 
throat choked; she clung fast to the arm of her 
aunt, who paid no attention whatever to the old 
man. He waited, then repeated his command, 
but again had no answer. Shaking his head, he 
turned and said something to the Indians in line ; 
they came forward and grouped about the coach. 
Those dark, stern faces promised nothing of 
safety. They were all old men, older even than 
the medicine-man, and they shook their heads 
stolidly when the driver asked them to help him 
get the coach up into place. 

Moment after moment dragged by, while 
through Mary’s mind went torturing memories 
of stories of scalping and burning by Indians of 
the wilds. The light of a lantern’s gleam, the sud- 
den swinging of the lantern itself above her head, 
made her spring up screaming aloud with terror. 

“ Don’t, Mary, please don’t ! ” begged her 
Aunt Kate. 

“Who is there?” asked a voice behind the 
lantern. 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


201 


“We are/’ said Mrs. Merwin. “How do 
you do? ” 

“For mercy’s sake, it’s the folks from Red 
Top Ranch! ” returned the voice, and Mary saw 
through the mist of her fright the face of Mrs. 
O’Brien. The young woman said something 
rapidly in their own language to the Indians, and 
they drew away a little. Then she held out her 
hand. “Do climb out!” she said. “Let me 
help you! ” 

Mrs. Merwin and Mary were soon on the 
ground beside her. 

“ What made Mr. Moonshine bring us here? ” 
asked Mary. 

“ He ’s looney, poor old fellow. He came into 
camp and told me that he run you up here be- 
cause you mentioned my mother and me to him. 
He was off on a round-up with some of the 
young men.” 

“Are you on the war-path, too? ” gasped Mary, 
looking up into Mrs. O’Brien’s face. 

“Not a bit of it,” she answered, with a smile. 
“I’m just here with my mother, visiting her re- 
lations. The old lady is on the war-path herself, 
so is Moonshine. The rest of the Utes are on 
their way to spend the winter with the Sioux, 
where there is food to eat. It is too slim pick- 
ings out at White Rock this fall for them. I ’m 
sorry you had such a scare, both of you. Come, 


202 


RED TOP RANCH 


Mrs. Merwin, we ’ll go over to my tent, and I ’ll 
see if I can fix you up for the night. You better 
feed your team,” she spoke to the driver. “ Old 
Uncle Moony has smashed your wheel for you. 
You can’t get it any farther to-night.” 

“ I can get myself farther though,” answered 
the man. He came and spoke to Mrs. Merwin. 
“ The wheel is off sure and that puts the coach 
out, but if you and the little girl will get up on 
one of the horses, I can lead you to the Powder 
River ” 

“ Thank you, but ” Mrs. Merwin looked 

doubtfully from him to Mrs. O’Brien. 

‘‘ It can’t be done. Not to-night,” she said. 
“ You see our Ute boys are out to-night round- 
ing up a provision wagon from Uncle Sam’s 
soldiers, just to advertise to Government how 
hungry White Rock made them. You might 
run into them. It won’t do to let lady folks go 
out of camp to-night. Your driver can ride on, if 
he wants to.” She turned to Mary. “ Come 
and see the nice tent I ’ll put you in,” she said. 
“ I ’ll take Patsy into my mother’s tepee. Come 
along, you ’re my prisoners of war.” She led 
the way towards the camp-fire. Mrs. Merwin 
and Mary, with their hand-bags in their hands, 
followed, Mary hurrying along beside her aunt 
feeling almost as if she were in a dream. As 
they passed the camp-fire they saw Moonshine 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


203 


squatted on the ground silently puffing his pipe. 
Bird-of-the-Mountain stood at the entrance of 
her tepee. When she saw who was with her 
daughter, she turned and disappeared inside. 

“ My mother is crosser than ever at white folks 
these days,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “ I shall not be 
sorry to leave her and go homje next week.” 

“ You are going home next week, then? ” asked 
Mrs. Merwin. 

“Yes, my husband telephoned by long dis- 
tance from Laramie the other day that if I did n’t 
hurry home soon, I ’d find him gone.” 

“ Oh, have you a telephone here? ” cried 
Mary. “We can call up uncle and ” 

“ Not here. No, we ’re not quite so stylish as 
that. I was in town getting some things for the 
baby, and I called up Laramie to speak to my 
husband. Here you are! ” She stopped before 
a little tent, pushed back the flap, and entered 
with her lantern. “ Come in.” 

It was a pleasant, clean interior, the white can- 
vas walls enclosing a wide camp cot bed and a 
tiny camp stove which shut out the chill of night 
with radiant heat. In a small skin hammock 
slept Patsy. Mary peeped at him admiringly. 
His mother put down the lantern and unfastened 
the thongs that held the hammock in place. 

“ I ’ll take him and sling him up in my mother’s 
tepee for to-night,” she said. “And I ’ll bring 


^04 RED TOP RANCH 

you something to eat. How will breakfast food 
and canned milk do? I can get that for you 
good and hot in about five minutes. You must 
be hungry.” She stood in the entrance of the 
tent, smiling hospitably. 

“ Thank you, hot porridge would be just the 
thing,” said Mrs. Merwin, sitting down on the 
edge of the bed. 

“ Lots of it, please,” laughed Mary. “ If 
it ’s cooked thin, I believe I could drink a 
quart ! ” 

The young woman disappeared. Mary picked 
up the lantern from the ground and put it on 
Mrs. O’Brien’s little trunk, which was placed on 
boughs above the dampness of the ground. 

“ Ought we to be afraid,” Auntie? ” she asked 
seriously. 

Mrs. Merwin smiled. “ No, dear, I am sure 
there ’s nothing to be afraid of, but your uncle 
will be worried about us when the driver gets to 
the hotel and tells him where he left us.” 

“ I do wish they had a telephone here.” Mary 
sat down beside her aunt. “ Then we could call 
him up and tell him we are all right.” 

It was not long before they had eaten heartily 
of the cereal and milk brought them, and were 
warm and cosy side by side in the camp bed. 
Mary soon fell fast asleep in her Aunt Kate’s 
arms, but Mrs. Merwin lay wide awake for 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


205 


hours. At last she, too, fell asleep and knew no 
more until dawn. 

“ Well, is this the way you two girls meet me 
at Powder River? ” cried a familiar voice, awak- 
ening both of the sleepers. 

“ Oh, Uncle Billy! ” cried Mary, jumping out 
of bed. “ The Indians captured us and ” 

He laughed aloud as he came into the tent. 

“ Well, you Ve got pretty good quarters here, 
for captives. I hope you were n’t too much wor- 
ried, Kate?” 

“ No, but I ’m glad you ’ve come.” She sat 
up and kissed him. 

“ I can’t make much fuss about their bringing 
you here, though I should like to; for we are all 
in a hurry to get these Utes out of this country 
and over into Dakota with the Sioux. They ’re 
ten miles off the stage road, and I did n’t know 
that they were within hundreds of miles when I 
sent for you.” 

“Are n’t you afraid they will capture you 
and torture you. Uncle Billy? ” asked Mary 
anxiously. 

“ No, my dear. In the first place there ’s no- 
body around but a few old half-sick bucks 
and that medicine-man who ran you in. The 
younger ones are all out of camp, for some 
reason.” 

“ They have gone to round up Uncle Sam’s 


206 


RED TOP RANCH 


soldiers’ provision wagon,” said Mary, and told 
him what Mrs. O’Brien had said. He heard with 
much interest. 

“ That explains a lot that we did n’t under- 
stand,” he said. “ They are working good poli- 
tics for Indian rights. But, come; it’s a good 
thing you two slept in your clothes ; we can start 
at once. I ’ve got a top buggy and a pair of 
horses outside. We ’ll be at the hotel for break- 
fast, inside of two hours. Your stage driver 
got in about three o’clock this morning on one 
of his horses and made me ready to get out 
and scalp the whole Ute nation and him thrown 
in.” 

‘‘ I think we have had a grand adventure,” 
said Mary, putting on her hat. ‘‘Won’t the 
girls at home be excited when I tell them I was 
captured by the Indians.” 

“ Well, run and say good-bye to Mrs. 
O’Brien,” smiled Uncle Billy, “ and we ’ll get 
out of this adventure just as fast as we can.” 

Good-byes were quickly said, and Mary, 
tucked between her uncle and aunt in the buggy, 
was soon rolling away towards their place of 
destination. 

As they came to the top of a rise of ground, 
they saw riding towards them a band of Indians 
in war-paint and feathers. They were bringing 
into camp a large Government wagon, drawn by 


IN 'AN INDIAN CAMP 


207 

some of their own horses. As they came nearer, 
a number of the younger Indians galloped for- 
ward as if to inspect them. Mr. Merwin stood 
up in the buggy, waved his whip, lifted his hat 
and waved it high in air, calling aloud in the way 
he often summoned his boys to dinner at Red 
Top Ranch. One of the young Indians signalled 
to the others to wait, then rode forward alone to 
meet the buggy as it was stopped by its driver. 
Mary’s heart was beating like a bird’s, and she 
could scarcely breathe. Her uncle sat down and 
put his arm around her. 

“ Don’t be frightened, darling,” said her aunt. 
“We know this young man. He is educated; 
he is a graduate.” 

The Indian came forward and saluted. “ How 
do you do, Mr. Merwin,” he called, in excellent 
English. “ I am glad to see you.” 

“ I ’m glad to see you too, but I ’d like to see 
you in better business than this! ” returned Mr. 
Merwin. 

“ Well, we have to do something to advertise 
and get the Department to pay attention to our 
people’s needs,” said the Ute. 

“ Good-bye. These ladies are hungry,” said 
Mr. Merwin, and speaking to his horses lifted his 
whip. 

The young leader saluted, rode back, and gave 
an order to his men. They parted in ranks and 


208 


RED TOP RANCH 


the buggy went rapidly onward through a lane 
of painted horsemen, sitting solemn on either 
side. A few moments later, and the band was 
out of sight, galloping down the hills on their 
way towards their encampment. 


CHAPTER XV 

HOME AGAIN 

They were all back at Red Top Ranch after 
the visit to the mine. Thanksgiving Day had 
come and gone, and Mary was packing her trunk 
for the return to New Rochelle. It had been de- 
cided that her Aunt Kate was to take her home 
and make a short visit in the East and see New 
York for the first time. To-morrow they would 
be going to Laramie to take the train for Chi- 
cago. Mary was trying to be useful and get her 
things in order, but she kept running out of doors 
to see Uncle Billy, to feed the bottle-colt, to see 
what Bud Todd was doing, to say good-bye to 
dogs, or calves, or chickens, or to have a little 
visit with Fireball. 

The pretty mare seemed to know that her 
friend was going away and nozzled against Mary 
who talked to her of their happy days together. 

It was just before sunset that Mary went out 
for one more good-bye to Fireball, and found her 
tied to a post of the front porch. Mary’s sad- 
dle and bridle were on her and a new crop was 

209 


SIO 


RED TOP RANCH 


tied with a broad red ribbon to the saddle. ’By 
another ribbon a large envelope was suspended 
from the mare’s neck, addressed in hand-printed 
letters : — 


MISS MARY LLOYD, 
RED TOP RANCH 


Mary stood and stared for a minute, then 
fairly trembling with excitement, she took the 
envelope, opened it and read these words ; 

Red Top Ranch, November, 1906. 

“ Dear Mary: 

“ Enclosed please find legal deed of gift from 
my former owners, Kate and William Merwin. 
Bud Todd is to go to New York and take care 
of me on the train. This is to let you know 
that I am, 

“ Yours till death, 

“ Fireball.” 

Mary stood with the papers in her hand and 
gazed at the beautiful animal. Fireball whinnied 
as if asking what it all meant. Mary felt big 
tears of joy stealing down her face. At first she 
could not move, but stood spell-bound, for it 
seemed too good to be true. She heard a sound 
of scuffling and Bert and Charlie pulled each 


IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


211 


other into view around the corner of the house 
where they had been peeping to see how she took 
this great surprise. Aunt Kate came out in the 
porch then, sat down in a rocking-chair and pre- 
tended to sew. Mary walked slowly to the porch, 
dropped down on the bottom step and leaned her 
head against her aunt’s knee. 

“ Oh, Aunt Kate, is it true? Is it true? ” she 
managed to say. 

“ Yes, dear.” Her aunt smoothed the bright, 
fluffy hair. “ Yes, I wrote and asked your 
father and mother if they minded if I gave you 
Fireball and they are willing. Your uncle made 
up his mind to give you a horse and I knew that 
none of the others would please you.” 

“ Oh, I — I wanted her so,” gasped Mary. She 
took her aunt’s hand and cuddled her cheek in the 
palm. “ I wanted her so, but I did n’t dare say 
so ! ” she said. “ Mother wrote me not to ask 
to buy her, because she was sure you could not 
spare her.” 

“ I have Venus,” said Aunt Kate contentedly. 
“ Besides, I am going to New York.” 

“ Won’t it be fun to travel together,” said 
Mary. 

Just then she saw her uncle coming on Nibs 
from an errand and she sprang up, loosed Fire- 
ball’s halter, jumped on her back, and was away 
like the wind to meet him. 


212 


.RED TOP RANCH 


“ Uncle Billy, I don’t even know how to begin 
to thank you and auntie,” she called joyously as 
she wheeled and rode at his side. 

“ Well, as long as you saved my wife’s life 
when she was captured by the Indians she has a 
right to give you her trick mare if she wants to,” 
he answered, with his funniest smile. 

“ You dear, lovely man! ” said Mary, gazing 
at him with affection. 

“You dear, lovely girl!” he returned, laugh- 
ing. “ Our secret has panned out all right, 
has n’t it, honey? I sent for you to cheer Aunt 
Kate up, and she seemed more pleased at the idea 
of your owning Fireball than with anything this 
whole year.” 

“ I ’m glad,” said Mary. “ Oh, Uncle Billy, 
I do hate to go and leave you ! ” 

“ I hate to spare you,” he said. “ But never 
you mind, sweetheart. There are other summers 
coming. You and Uncle Billy will never go 
back on each other.” 

“ Never! ” said Mary. 

When Mr. Merwin and the boys saw their 
mother and Mary off on the train at Laramie, 
Charlie broke down and cried. Fred and Bert 
made fun of him, but Charlie did not care. He 
sniffed and wiped his eyes before all the people 
in the sleeping-car when he kissed his mother 
good-bye. Then he rushed out of the train. 





“ Oh I Auntie, is it true ? 




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IN AN INDIAN CAMP 


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Mr. Merwin and the other boys stood in the 
aisle talking with Mrs. Merwin and Mary until 
the train began to move. Then they hurried out, 
and stood on the platform. 

Mary could see her uncle standing there wav- 
ing his big, soft hat, the mountain breeze blowing 
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station. 

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a brave effort to smile. 

“ You don’t want to go home yet, do you? ” 
said her aunt. 

“ It will be all right to be at home again,” an- 
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